


From Whence Comes the Sun

by PixChuu22



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Demons, Demons Are Assholes, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt Chloe Decker, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 05 Part 1, Michael is a Little Shit, Post-Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28019094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixChuu22/pseuds/PixChuu22
Summary: Takes place immediately following Lucifer s5e5: Detective Amenadiel.After years of dancing around their feelings for one another, Lucifer Morningstar and Chloe Decker have finally admitted to themselves what sort of relationship they want with one another, and they've taken the first step into solidifying it. Unfortunately, Lucifer's brother, the archangel Michael, has plans for Lucifer, Chloe, and the entire human race that will interfere with their happily ever after. Something has caused the sun to go dark, and Michael is showing a marked interest in Chloe with eternal night descending.  Lucifer and Chloe have to figure out how to stop Michael before the entire planet devolves into complete chaos.Updating on Saturdays until complete.
Relationships: Amenadiel & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Amenadiel & Mazikeen (Lucifer TV), Chloe Decker & Dan Espinoza, Chloe Decker & Ella Lopez, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Ella Lopez & Lucifer Morningstar, Mazikeen & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 95
Kudos: 230





	1. Chapter 1

There was a little black spot on the sun. The majority of the world didn’t even notice the change; it was such a small thing, after all, that you’d need specialized equipment to even be aware of it. The few people who _did_ have that equipment were aware of it, but they assumed it to be a normal phenomenon, perhaps sunspot activity of a particular intensity. No one suspected demons were involved. Why should they?

The spot was bigger the next day. It still wasn’t large enough for most people to notice, though – of course – so life went on as normal, including that of LAPD Detective Chloe Decker.

She had more than enough to occupy her attention recently, like finding out she’d been created as a foil for fallen archangel and current Lord of Hell Lucifer Morningstar, her partner and civilian consultant to the LAPD. Her acceptance of that fact had been a slow grind for them both, but they’d finally come to an understanding the night before: if he could be vulnerable with her – literally, in his case; being near her made him vulnerable to physical harm from Earthly weapons in a way he otherwise never would be – then she could be vulnerable with him. They’d sealed it with a kiss, the fourth they’d shared in the five years they’d known each other, and things had been moving in a direction that promised to be mutually pleasing when the alarm on Chloe’s cell phone had interrupted them.

They’d broken apart, both of them vaguely stunned and confused by the sudden interruption, and Chloe had murmured an apology as she fumbled her phone out of her pants pocket to check what was causing it to interrupt them.

“Is it important?” Lucifer asked, his tone suggesting he really hoped it wasn’t.

“It’s…yeah. It’s important,” Chloe admitted, lifting it to show him the screen.

_BEDTIME – 15MINS_

“You have a reminder for bedtime?” Lucifer asked, bemused. “Wait – you send yourself at bed at 9:30? Detective, that seems a bit –”

“Okay, it’s not _my_ bedtime,” Chloe said, turning the alarm off and shoving her cell back into her pocket with a faint grin. “I start Trixie’s bedtime at 9:30. We make sure she has everything ready for school the next day, and we take a few minutes to talk to each other about our days and reconnect.”

“Ah,” Lucifer said, a sad smile touching his lips as he looked down at Chloe’s face with an expression of regret in his eyes. “Then is _it_ important.”

“Yeah.” Chloe reached out hesitantly, brushing the knuckles of one hand lightly against his jaw, enjoying the roughness of the stubble there against the sensitive skin of the back of her hand. “But…but we can pick this up again tomorrow?”

Lucifer’s expression immediately lightened and he reached up to tug very gently at one lock of her long, light brown hair, making her scalp tingle lightly. “Of course, Detective.”

Given that conversation, Chloe had a certain amount of nervousness bubbling inside her stomach as she approached the station the next morning. She was distracted from her own inner excitement for a moment when she saw the thin man walking down the sidewalk in front of the station, moving away from her where she sat in the stalled early morning traffic, waiting to pull into the underground parking garage that the LAPD used. He was in a long, dirty trenchcoat, his dark skin dry and lined with many hard years, his short white hair tangled with bits of leaves and grass from wherever he’d slept most recently. He turned his somehow sweet, aged face her way just as the light turned green and Chloe had only a moment to read the large placard he held in front of him with both gnarled hands.

**T** H **E** **E** N **D**

**I** _ **S**_ **N** IG **H**

his sign read in uneven, blocky letters. Except, that wasn’t exactly right. Some jokester had added a quick lowercase T to the final word, turning the sign into

**T** H **E** **E** N **D**

**I** _ **S**_ **N** IG **H** t

Chloe laughed softly to herself, shaking her head a little as she moved forward with the flow of traffic, flipping on her turn signal to indicate she was heading into the parking garage under the LAPD station. She did not know, could not have known, that his sign was the truth.

Chloe had only just climbed out of her police issued vehicle in the underground parking garage when a familiar voice hailed her, pulling her lips into a smile.

“Detective!”

Chloe turned in the direction of Lucifer’s greeting and snorted a soft laugh; he was waiting against one wall of the underground garage, leaning his long, lean body against the cement blocks behind him. He was standing in one of the rare pools of shadows in the garage, casting most of him into darkness and making it hard for her to pick out the details of his face and form; too bad. His details were worth taking in.

Lucifer was tall and lean, compactly muscled. He moved with an almost cat-like grace most days, slinking through the world with an amused expression. His face was that of an angel – literally, considering he had been an archangel for millennia before his father cast him out of Heaven. His hair was dark and always perfectly coifed, his five-o-clock shadow groomed to an exacting length. For Chloe, he was practically a perfect man, despite the fact that he wasn’t really a ‘man’ at all.

Unfortunately, he was a man of mystery today. The shadows draped around him, making it hard for her to make out his features with any clarity.

“Are you being mysterious today?” she asked. “Hiding in the shadows?”

“I wanted to grab a private moment with you before you went up,” he confessed, and Chloe felt a blush spreading up her face.

“Actually, this is a good time to talk about it,” she said. “I know last night changed everything for us. I mean, it did for me. Did it…for you?”

“Last night.” Lucifer paused for a moment and Chloe felt her heart rate picking up in sudden alarm. What if nothing had changed for him? What if –

But he spoke again, cutting her racing thoughts off. “Yes, it changed everything for me.”

Relieved, Choe reached towards him, offering her hand almost shyly. After a brief hesitation, Lucifer reached out and took the offered fingers, giving them a gentle squeeze.

“Good. Okay, good,” Chloe said, giving a soft laugh of relief, enjoying the warmth of his hand wrapped around hers. “But um…I don’t like being part of the work gossip mill if I can avoid it. So, if you don’t mind…can we kind of keep this relationship quiet for now?”

“Relationship,” Lucifer repeated, seeming to roll the word around wonderingly. “Yes, all right. We’ll keep it quiet.”

“Thank you,” Chloe said, giving his hand a quick squeeze. “So…the private moment?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling her a little closer to him, his hand tightening on hers slightly as if taking a more secure grip to keep her from getting away. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I’m afraid I need you to –”

The ring of Chloe’s phone interrupted and she huffed out an annoyed breath as she stepped back a single step from Lucifer, using her free hand to wrestle the phone out of her pants pocket. She raised it to look at who was calling and felt her blood freeze in her veins.

The name ‘Lucifer’ was displayed prominently on her screen.

Chloe didn’t hesitate, jerking her hand roughly free of the fingers wrapped around it despite the pain is caused to break free from how tight the grip on her fingers had become, stumbling back several steps to put herself at a safe distance. He didn’t follow her, his hand closing into a fist before he lowered it back to his side.

“Michael,” she snapped, using her thumb to answer the call. She raised her phone to her ear. “I’m glad you called, Lucifer. Your brother is here in the precinct garage.”

“Amenadiel?” he asked after a brief moment of silence.

“No. Michael,” she said.

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Lucifer said, and Chloe ended the call, backing up another step as she glared at Michael.

“The jig is up,” he said, dropping the British accent that Lucifer always spoke with. Michael stepped closer, making Chloe take several more steps back, stumbling a bit over a parking berm. She got her balance quickly, continuing her slow retreat. He moved until the shadows were no longer wrapped quite so tightly around him, and Chloe felt a stab of alarm as she saw the horrific wound cutting across his face.

“Your face,” she whispered, unable to keep the horror out of her voice.

“Oh, this?” Michael said conversationally, reaching up to trace the air above the wound with one index finger. “Yeah, hurts like hell. Lucifer gave it to me just a few days ago, actually.”

“Oh, my God,” Chloe whispered, bumping into the front of a car. She began skirting sideways to move around it, still retreating from Michael’s slow forward movement.

“Yeah, Father wasn’t paying attention when it happened. Of course, Father hasn’t been paying attention to much for the last few thousand years, so it’s hardly surprising.”

“Why are you here, Michael? I thought I made it pretty clear that I don’t want to see you ev –”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it,” Michael said quickly, cutting her off with a small wave of one hand. “I was just stopping by to discuss your future. You see, it occurred to me that you might be the key to getting everything I want. I was hoping we could discuss things peacefully, but that’s obviously not going to work.”

There was a sudden sharp whooshing of air in the parking garage, making Chloe almost stumble as she took her next step backwards.

“Obviously.”

The familiar voice sounded just behind her, a bare second before Chloe bumped into the solidity of a body. Thankfully, she’d had just enough warning from Lucifer’s voice to not panic when her retreat was suddenly stopped.

“Lucifer!” Her voice was full of relief and she turned to smile up at him, momentarily stunned as she saw him slowly drawing huge, shining white wings close to his body. It was only the second time she’d ever seen them up close, and they were very distracting.

Michael’s voice immediately drew her back into the situation at hand, though, and Chloe took a step to the side to stand beside Lucifer rather than directly in front of him. She was no match for a pair of archangels, but that didn’t mean she was going to cower behind Lucifer like a child.

“Hello, brother. Planning to permanently scar me again?” Michael asked, the bitterness in his tone unmistakable.

“I haven’t completely eliminated the possibility,” Lucifer replied coldly. “Why are you here, Michael?”

“Just needed a minute with Chloe,” Michael said, giving a little nonchalant shrug.

“You don’t need even a _second_ with the Detective,” Lucifer shot back. “Leave, Michael. Or I will make you leave.”

“You think so?” Michael asked, sounding vaguely amused. “What about if I do…this?”

He moved faster than Chloe’s eyes could track. She saw the blur of movement and then hands closed around her wrists, jerking her forward. Lucifer moved just as quickly, though, his fist hammering into the side of Michael’s face. The hands on her wrists loosened and Chloe jerked away, stumbling several steps backwards before pulling her gun from the holster and holding it in a supported two-hand grip, pointing at Michael. Sure, bullets wouldn’t kill a Celestial; she knew that from personal experience. But it would sting enough to distract him for a few seconds, and that might be all Lucifer would need to come out on top.

But Michael was backing up, rubbing his jaw with one hand and smiling faintly.

“Pretty fast, brother,” he said. “Good to know what I’ll be working with.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?” Lucifer snapped, his hands still clenched into fists at his sides.

“I have some big plans that are coming to fruition now.” Michael stared hard at Chloe, making it clear that she was a part of his plans, whatever they were. “You’re fast, Lucifer. But I don’t think you’re going to be fast enough.”

The blast of air from Michael’s dark wings suddenly bursting into the material world blew Chloe’s hair into her face, temporarily blinding her. She missed seeing his departure, the escape coming so close on the heels of his wings exploding outward.

Lucifer’s hands were on her face instantly, gently pushing her hair away as she lowered her gun to point at the ground. She looked up into his dark eyes, noting the worry in them. His eyebrows were drawn low, and his fingers stroked her cheeks gently past the point of moving her hair away, his touch lingering on her face.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice a murmur.

“Yeah. Yeah, he had me fooled for a minute by standing in the shadows, but you called just as he was taking hold of my hand.”

“Mmm,” Lucifer said, a brief burst of alarm sliding across his face as he glanced to one side, presumably in the direction Michael had fled. “’Perfect timing,’ indeed. Did he say anything that might give you a clue as to why he was here?”

“No, you know as much as I do,” Chloe said, stepping back to holster her gun. “And we can’t really stay down here debating what might have inspired Michael to show up at the precinct today; I have to get upstairs and get the day started.”

“Of course,” Lucifer said, gesturing her forward with a tiny bow, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth slightly. “Crimes to solve.”

Chloe shook her head, giving a little laugh. They rode up in the elevator together in a companionable silence. It wasn’t until the elevator doors were opening that Chloe realized her conversation about interoffice romance hadn’t been with the person who actually needed to hear it. She was opening her mouth to say something when Lucifer twined his fingers through hers and gently tugged her from the elevator into the precinct.

For a moment she thought about snatching her hand back, but the warmth of his fingers was so comforting, especially after Michael’s unwelcome and unbidden touch. She realized that, despite her better judgment, what she wanted was to go on holding Lucifer’s hand. It was childish, it was impulsive, and it was ridiculous. But it was also really nice.

“Hey, guys, I was looking for you!” The sound of Ella’s cheerful voice made both Chloe and Lucifer turn, and the small forensic scientist froze in midstep as she took in their joined hands. Her smile dropped off of her face, leaving her expression blankly shocked for a second before a new, wider smile slowly began creeping over her features.

“Ella,” Chloe began, not entirely sure what she was going to say, but it was already too late.

Ella’s words were almost a whisper as she looked between them, her smile huge. “Oh. My. God. Are you two…?”

“Yes,” Lucifer said, his voice full of satisfaction and his smile nearly as wide as Ella’s.

“Well, we’re – it’s new. It’s uh, it’s just…we kissed,” Chloe finally confessed.

“Oh my _God!_ ” Ella squealed, rushing forward to throw her arms around both of them, her head nestled between them as she squeezed them in an ecstatic hug. “I’m so happy for you guys! You’ve been tap dancing around this for years! I was seriously starting to think about getting into voodoo just so I could make little dolls and force them together just so you two would finally take the next step and now _here you are!_ ”

Chloe carefully extricated herself from the hug, releasing Lucifer’s hand at the same time. Ella stepped back, still smiling blissfully.

“Well. Uh. I’m glad we didn’t have to push you to dark magic,” Chloe said wryly, smoothing her hands over the front of her suit jacket.

“Although it would’ve been entertaining,” Lucifer put in.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Chloe said, blowing out a quick breath. “What was it you needed us for, Ella?”

“Oh! I wanted to drop off the final toxicology reports from that murder you solved last week. No big.” Ella pointed over towards Chloe’s desk. “Mission accomplished a couple minutes ago, actually. I was just heading back to the lab.”

“Right. Well. Far be it for us to interrupt serious work,” Chloe said.

“Hey, this is the _best_ interruption,” Ella said, giving one last huge smile at the two of them. “I’m so happy for you!”

And then she was bouncing away, her long dark ponytail swinging with each joyful step.

“Well, we’ve definitely made _someone’s_ day,” Chloe muttered, glancing over at Lucifer. He raised a single eyebrow and she shook her head. “I have a pile of paperwork to finish up, including adding Ella’s report to my case file. I’ll come find you if we get a new body, okay?”

“Of course, Detective,” Lucifer said. Chloe headed towards her desk as Lucifer headed into the precinct, making the rounds of the uniforms and staff with whom he had struck up a strange sort of friendship.

Chloe was able to make her way through a couple of peaceful hours of focused work, making notes on ongoing case files and finishing her reports on several closed cases. Slowly, she became aware of a building buzz of conversation in the precinct, the sound unlike the usual day-to-day chatter of cops at work. There was an underlying stress to the tones of the voices she could hear that crept into her conversation, drawing her attention away from the scattered papers on her desk.

Chloe glanced up, taking in the small knots of people speaking in low voices, their faces drawn with tension, eyebrows drawn down and mouths pursed. Something was going on. Something had disturbed the entire precinct while she’d been neck-deep in casefiles.

Chloe pushed her rolling chair back from her desk, rising and stretching to work the tightness out of her muscles caused by hours of sitting in the same position in a cheap, bought-in-bulk rolling desk chair. She intended to seek out one of the friendlier knots of uniforms to see if she could get some details on what had everyone so upset, but movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.

Ella was hurrying towards Chloe’s desk, her expression just as troubled as all the others in the precinct. She had her cellphone in her hand, held close to her chest like she was trying to protect it…or hide what was on it.

“Ella?” Chloe asked as soon as the shorter woman was in earshot. “What’s going on? Everyone looks upset. What did I miss?”

“My Twitter feed is _full_ of stories about the sun!” Ella said, holding her phone towards Chloe. Chloe recognized the Twitter layout, but that was about all she could get from it.

“The sun?” she repeated, even more confused than she’d been moments before.

“There’s something wrong with the sun. People are saying maybe it’s going to go out.” Ella’s voice was tight, almost shaking, and Chloe felt alarm stab through her at the words.

“Go _out?_ ” she repeated, giving a quick, nervous laugh. “I mean, that…that’s impossible, right? It can’t just go out.”

“Not without help.”

Both women turned towards Lucifer as he spoke. He didn’t look as tense as the humans in the precinct; instead, he looked annoyed.

“Help? But who could do that?” Ella asked, giving a little laugh at the absurdity of the statement.

“I have a few ideas. Something like this sounds like ‘big plans coming to fruition’ to me,” Lucifer murmured, his dark eyes locked on Chloe. She felt a stab of alarm as she realized what he was saying. Sure, it might be outside of the realm of normal science for the sun to be helped into darkness…but perhaps not outside the influence of a celestial.

“Oh,” Chloe whispered, her voice thin. “Oh, _crap_.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chloe and Lucifer excused themselves as quickly as they could from Ella, hurrying away to the evidence room in an attempt to find a small bit of privacy in the busy precinct. As soon as the door shut behind Lucifer, Chloe turned towards him and demanded, “Is this Michael?”

“Possibly,” Lucifer said, tugging sharply at the bottom of his suit jacket despite the fact that it hung as perfectly as it ever did. “It feels like something he’d do, darkening the sun to scare the entire planet.”

“Okay, but _how?_ I mean, shouldn’t…shouldn’t God get involved with this?” Chloe asked, keeping her voice low in case anyone was passing outside the door of the evidence room.

“Dear old Dad hasn’t bestirred himself to look in on his little humanity experiment in thousands of years. No one in the Silver City has heard from him in ages. Amenadiel told me that Michael has Dad’s ear, but I can’t check on how true that is without taking a day trip up to Heaven, and I’m _persona non grata_ up there.”

Chloe heaved a frustrated sigh, staring at the many boxes of evidence arranged neatly along the rows of the evidence closet without really seeing anything. Her mind was racing in useless, frightened circles. She had never been what anyone would call a ‘science whiz,’ but she knew enough to know that the Earth _needed_ the Sun. If it actually went dark, the consequences would be astronomical.

“Lucifer, how the Hell could Michael be causing this?”

“I don’t know,” Lucifer admitted, sounding frustrated. “It’s nothing I’ve ever contemplated before. I’ll go speak to Amenadiel, but I seriously doubt he has any clues that might help us stop whatever this is that Michael is doing.”

“What about…what if demons are coming back to Earth?” Chloe asked, knowing she was flailing madly in the darkness to try and find a cause.

“Demons don’t have the kind of power to do this. Besides, I have it from a trustworthy source that Hell no longer needs a warden.”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Chloe asked, her eyes going wide. She stepped closer, leaving no space between them in the tiny evidence room, raising a hand to rest it on Lucifer’s forearm. “What do you mean? Are you saying you…you don’t have to go back? Ever?”

“That is…unclear,” Lucifer admitted. “I’ve been meaning to pop down to check on things…but perhaps Amenadiel will have some information about this situation that will make such a trip unnecessary.”

“Right. Okay…you should go do that. I’ll stay here.”

“Of course. If any interesting murders happen while I’m away –”

“I’ll call,” Chloe promised, a faint grin touching her face. She turned to leave the evidence closet but Lucifer caught her hand in a gentle grip, his touch so much softer than the way Michael had grabbed her earlier that morning. She turned back to face him and for a moment all her worries dropped away as she looked into the warmth of his dark eyes.

“Detective,” he said, his voice very soft. “I wanted…before you left, I wanted to say that…despite this situation, I am…happy.”

He said the word like he was surprised by the reality, and Chloe felt a tightness in her chest loosen. She stepped back towards him, sliding both her hands into his and squeezing them gently.

“Me, too,” she said, her voice soft.

The kiss they shared was tentative, neither of them entirely sure of their relationship yet. That didn’t stop them from both leaning into the kiss with enthusiasm, the brush of lips slowly deepening into the tentative touch of tongues.

The door opened and Ella popped her head in. “Oh, _there_ you are!”

Chloe and Lucifer jumped apart like guilty teenagers, Chloe’s cheeks flaming. Lucifer gave a huffing sigh, edging around Chloe to face Ella.

“Ms. Lopez. Your timing is lamentable.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault. One of the uniforms was looking for Chloe. They’ve got what looks like a hold-up gone wrong and they need a detective. No one else is in right now,” Ella explained, shoving a file folder into the evidence closet and shaking it slightly. “I was just about to head out myself when the uni grabbed me and asked if I’d seen you. Sorry to interrupt what was obviously a really good time.”

“It’s fine,” Chloe said softly, resting one hand against the back of Lucifer’s suit jacket. “I’ll handle this. You go talk to Amenadiel.”

Lucifer glanced back, his expression regretful. “Right. I suppose needs must. Hopefully we can pick this back up later?”

Chloe smiled, stroking her hand down his back. “Oh, believe me: I plan to.”

* * *

It wasn’t hard to find the scene once she got to the right part of the city; Chloe only needed to follow the flashing lights. There were several police cars and an ambulance, all strobing red-blue, as she pulled onto the street and began looking for somewhere to park her own car.

Chloe had to circle the block twice before she could find a parking spot, and it was on her second circling of the block that she noticed the raggedy, disheveled homeless man walking slowly back and forth in front of an abandoned storefront on the next block over from the murder scene. Her eyes would’ve passed right over him, as they’d done the few other pedestrians in the area, except for one thing: he was carrying a large placard. She was too far away to see it clearly, but as she approached, she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. She _recognized_ that sign.

**T** H **E** **E** N **D**

 **I** _ **S**_ **N** IG **H** t

Given the speed of his walk, it was conceivable that he could’ve made it from in front of the precinct to this side of the city in the last few hours, but Chloe didn’t like seeing the same guy twice in one day. Especially not with the sun doing…whatever it was doing.

A car parked along the side of the street pulled out suddenly, and Chloe twisted the wheel to angle herself into the open spot. True, she’d have to walk back to the scene, but she wasn’t going to complain.

The homeless man and his sign were heading into the distance once Chloe successfully parallel parked and got out of the car. She wasted a few seconds staring after his retreating form until he turned a corner and disappeared from sight.

“Enough,” she whispered to herself, giving her head a tiny negating shake to dismiss her contemplation of the man and his sign. She tugged hard at the bottom of her suit jacket and walked purposefully back towards the alleyway a block back.

She could feel normalcy reasserting itself as she maneuvered between police vehicles, stepping into the buzz of activity that always surrounded an active crime scene. She spotted Ella, a little deeper into the alley than she’d been when Chloe had driven past a few minutes before. She approached the tiny forensic scientist, asking, “What have we got?”

Ella looked up from the puddle of blood she’d been eyeballing, a smile brightening her face. “Hey, Chloe. Okay, so, I’m thinking there were two victims here.”

“But…there’s only one body,” Chloe said, eyebrows lowering in confusion.

“Right, I know, but there’s definitely two distinct puddles of blood.” Ella pointed to one spot and then moved her finger slightly to point to the puddle around the body of the red-haired woman lying a little closer to the alley’s mouth. Chloe stared for a second before finally shaking her head.

“It all looks like one big puddle to me.”

“Well. It’s not,” Ella said, rising from the crouch she’d been holding since Chloe entered the alley. “There was definitely someone else over here. I’m guessing they must’ve fled the scene, although with this much blood loss, they aren’t gonna get far.”

“All right, walk me through it,” Chloe said, crossing her arms and leaning her weight into one hip as she stared at the bloody mess in the alleyway.

“Okay, victim one here is Angela McAlister, 34. She was probably passing on the street. I’m guessing victim two must’ve pulled her into the alley. Given the knife still buried in her ribs, I’m guessing victim two held Angela at knifepoint to try and rob her. What victim two wasn’t expecting was that Angela here had a gun.” Ella pointed to a pile of half-flattened, dirty cardboard boxes near the body. A tiny plastic yellow triangle was set just in front of them, marking the final resting place of a small handgun.

“Okay,” Chloe said, nodding as she looked from the gun to the body. There wasn’t much space between them; it made sense that if Angela had dropped the weapon, it would’ve ended up there.

“Angela pulled out her gun and victim two didn’t have the good sense to decide the robbery wasn’t going to work out for them. They went in for the stab,” Ella lunged forward, one hand thrusting out as she did so, “and victim one fired.”

Ella stumbled slowly and dramatically back a couple steps before miming a half-fall towards the blood on the alley’s concrete floor. “Victim two landed here, Angela fell there. The knife went right into her heart; she would’ve died in seconds. That’s why the blood puddle around Angela is comparatively small. Victim two wasn’t so lucky, given the puddle over here. It must’ve taken victim two at least five minutes to get up and stumble down the alley that way.”

Chloe followed Ella’s pointing finger, her eyebrows going up as she saw the solid wall of huge trash bins just a few feet deeper into the alley.

“There are blood smears on one of the bins, and a few drops of blood on the other side. I’m guessing victim two managed to staunch the bleeding and went for help.”

“So, we need to be checking hospitals for gunshot wounds.” Chloe pulled her phone out, already thumbing in a text to ask Dan if he could get on that while she continued to work the scene. “Thanks, Ella.”

“No worries,” Ella said, flashing another bright smile before she moved back towards Angela McAlister’s body to continue her work.

Chloe moved towards the mouth of the alley, wanting to get out of the dimness caused by the high walls of the buildings on either side. She frowned when she stepped out; it was almost noon and the sunlight should’ve been almost blinding, going from the dim alley onto the street. Instead, the quality of light was almost like mid-afternoon. Chloe squinted up at the sun for a second, but she couldn’t see anything; even with the mysterious dark spot, it was too bright for her naked eyes to make anything out.

Her phone buzzed in her hands and she looked down, blinking spots out of her eyes as she tried to read the text on her screen. It was from Dan, and she sighed softly as she read the brief message.

_Tied up for the next few. Will text if I can get on it before I hear from you again._

Well, there’d been no guarantee that he’d be able to drop what he was doing to help her. He hadn’t been at the precinct, after all; it made sense that he was tied up with cases of his own. She imagined that they’d all be up to their necks in cases in the next few days. Crime _always_ went up when there were strange circumstances – unusually hot days, long droughts, any kind of unrest up to and including celebrating sports wins – and she didn’t expect that the sun going out was going to convince people to stay in their houses and hunker down.

Chloe leaned against the brick wall of one of the buildings beside the alley, opening the map app on the phone to begin searching for the nearest hospitals. She had to oversee the scene, but she could multitask. Her eyes ticked up from the phone for a second as it loaded her requested information. Her eyebrows drew down heavily as she took in the mid-afternoon light of the dimmed sunshine on the LA street. This was going to get bad.

* * *

Lucifer’s annoyance was bubbling in his chest as he jerked the door of his Corvette open, sliding into the driver’s seat. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in a staccato pattern as he stared at nothing, his lips pressed into a thin line. He’d been glancing up at the sun periodically throughout the last hour, and he could see that the dark spot was growing minute by minute. Its growth was almost imperceptible, like watching a flower opening, but it was definitely happening.

He’d gone straight to the home of Dr. Linda Martin after leaving the precinct, after a brief stop to retrieve his Corvette from Lux. He’d been just about to climb into it to head out when he’d had to fly to Chloe’s side, and unless he wanted to spend the day fluttering from place to place, he’d had to delay finding Amenadiel long enough to retrieve his car.

Of course, he might as well have saved himself the effort; when he’d pulled up to Linda’s house, he’d expected to find Amenadiel conveniently inside, despite the hour. Linda, as a working therapist, had office hours and patients that kept her away from the house throughout the day, but Amenadiel should have been there. After all, his temporary management of Lux had ended now that Lucifer no longer had to rush back to Hell to keep the demons under his thumb. What else did Amenadiel have to occupy his time?

But Lucifer had found the house dark and locked. He’d contemplated undoing the lock and going in to be sure, but he knew that was just a waste of time.

Of course, now he was stuck sitting in his Corvette with no idea of where to go to find Amenadiel.

Lucifer’s upper lip curled as he realized what he needed to do, and he felt a flare of annoyance. With a put-upon sigh, he slowly raised his hands to chest-level, pressing his palms together and lowering his head over them.

_‘Amenadiel. I need to speak with you.’_

The prayer had barely left his mind when the rush of air beside him alerted him to the presence of his brother. Lucifer lowered his hands and opened his eyes, turning to look into the passenger seat.

“You called?” Amenadiel’s voice was amused, his lips quirking slightly. “It’s been awhile since you used prayer to contact me.”

Lucifer huffed slightly, lips pressing tight for a moment. “Yes, brother, I _did_ call. Where the hell have you been?”

The amusement left Amenadiel’s face as the other archangel’s eyes ticked up towards the dimming sun. “I went home. I needed to speak to our siblings and see if anyone knew what was happening.”

“And what did they say?” Lucifer asked.

“No one knows anything. And no one can find Father to ask Him.”

“Unsurprising,” Lucifer muttered. “He never seems to be around anymore.”

“I was looking for him when you called,” Amenadiel continued. “I didn’t have any more luck than our siblings have had. Wherever Father is, He’s outside of the scope of celestial awareness.”

“Did you try asking Michael?” Lucifer asked, a bite to the question. Given that he’d seen his brother only a few hours before, he didn’t expect much from the question.

“I couldn’t find him,” Amenadiel said. “I was going to look for him once I’d exhausted the search for Father, but you called. I don’t expect he has any more idea than any of our siblings, though.” Amenadiel paused for a second before his eyes locked onto Lucifer’s face. Amenadiel’s expression hardened slightly. “Do _you_ know what’s happening?”

“Of course not!” Lucifer snapped. “I’m as clueless as you. Although I suspect that Michael may not be as ignorant of the situation as you think.”

“What?” Amenadiel’s body tightened as if he were readying himself for a fight, his hands clenching into fists in his lap. He twisted more fully towards Lucifer, his eyebrows lowering. “What do you mean?”

“I ran into our dear brother a few hours ago. He was trying to play at being me again, attempting to trick the Detective. I have no idea why he wanted to speak with her or if he had something else beyond a chat planned. Thankfully, I got there before anything else could happen. He did say something about ‘plans coming to fruition,’ though.”

They both paused, glancing up at the dimming sun, before they looked back at one another. 

“We need to find Michael,” Amenadiel said, his voice tight. “If he’s doing this, he has to be made to stop.”

“Agreed,” Lucifer said. “Any suggestions on where we can find him?”

Amenadiel stared at Lucifer silently, his dark eyes full of worry and hopelessness.

“That’s what I thought,” Lucifer sighed.

* * *

Chloe was wrapping up the scene of the murder when her phone rang. She finished signing the forms the uni was holding out to her and then pulled the phone from her pocket, glancing at the screen before raising it to her ear.

“Hey, Dan. I’ve already called local hospitals, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Thank God,” he said, and she noticed that his voice sounded tight and frustrated. “I wasn’t going to have the time. I only wrapped up my most recent scene ten minutes ago. I was heading back to the station when I got another body assigned to me.”

“Oh, wow,” Chloe said, sympathy clear in her tone. “I’m sorry. I hate when I get back-to-back cases like tha –”

The phone beeped in her ear, indicating an incoming phone call. Chloe sighed, muttering, “Hang on a second, Dan,” before pulling the phone down to see who was calling her. She felt a sinking sensation in her stomach as she saw the number for the precinct on the screen.

“Let me call you back,” she said, before ending the call with Dan to answer the other line.

“Detective Decker?”

Chloe couldn’t immediately place to woman’s voice, but it didn’t matter; she had a feeling she knew what the call was about.

“Speaking,” Chloe said.

“There’s been another murder. All the other detectives are out on fresh scenes. Are you almost done at your current scene?”

Chloe pressed her lips, raising a hand to rub her fingers over her forehead. So, it was going to be _that_ kind of day. Not surprising, considering the dimming sun overhead, but she had hoped LA would keep it together for at least a couple of days.

“I just finished,” Chloe said. “Text me the details and I’ll head to the next scene.”

Chloe started walking back towards her car, the last one to leave the scene. The body had been taken away hours ago, the crime scene techs having left shortly before, and the uniformed officers had been drifting away as the scene wrapped up over the last ten minutes. With no one around to overhear her, she dialed Lucifer’s number as she walked back towards her car. He picked up almost immediately.

“Lucifer. Any word from Amenadiel?”

“No, no one in the Silver City knows anything.” Lucifer’s voice was tight and unhappy, and Chloe felt her stomach sink.

“Have you been back to Hell?”

Lucifer’s sigh carried through the line. “Not yet. I’m afraid it’s going to be a necessity, though. Amenadiel and I have nearly exhausted the places we can imagine Michael hiding out, and we’ve seen no sign of him. I’ve no better leads to explore than asking demons if they know anything about the current situation.”

She could hear Amenadiel’s voice in the background, although the words were difficult to make out.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Amenadiel is going back up to the Silver City to check if Michael is lurking up there. I suppose we’ll be checking high and low today,” Lucifer added, a faint note of amusement in his voice.

“All right. Well, I’ve finished the scene I was working and I’m heading to a second murder. From what I’m hearing, Dan had back-to-back murders, too.”

“Is that normal?” Lucifer asked, sounding like he already knew the answer.

“No,” Chloe said, her tone dry. “But with the sun…doing whatever it’s doing, it’s not surprising that LA is losing its mind. Anyone who might’ve been on the edge of violence is going to be tipped over. I’m afraid the entire precinct is going to be pulling 16-hour-shifts until this thing with the sun is cleared up.”

“You’ve been ordered not to leave?”

“No, not yet. And, honestly, I’m going to have to get Trixie squared away before I can commit to staying at the precinct. As soon as we get off the phone, I’m going to call my mom and see if she can take Trixie for the next few days.” Chloe hesitated a second, stopping on the sidewalk and glancing around at the dim street, noting how long the shadows were considering it was only 1pm. She was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, frustration and fear silencing her for a second before she blurted out, “This _is_ only going to be for a few days, right? I mean…we can fix this, right?”

There was a long silence from the phone, the line hissing softly as Chloe held her breath, waiting for Lucifer’s answer. Finally, he spoke, each word slow and hesitant. “We…will try.”

“I guess I can’t really ask for more than that,” Chloe said, giving a tiny, mirthless laugh. “Okay. I’m going to call my mom. Be careful, okay?”

“Of course, Detective,” Lucifer said, and ended the call.

Chloe sighed, and dialed her mom, moving once more towards her car. She needed to get to the next crime scene. She didn’t have time to stand on the street, staring at the absurdly long shadows.

* * *

Lucifer pulled into the parking garage beneath Lux. He parked his car and sat for a moment, frustration bubbling in him as he gripped the steering wheel with both hands, glaring at the instrument panel in front of him. Amenadiel had taken off shortly after his Detective’s phone call, waiting until they turned into a blind alley away from the sight of humans before unfurling his heavy grey wings and taking off into the sky. Now that his Corvette was safely parked, Lucifer could summon his own wings into the material world and head to Hell.

Still, he hesitated, sitting and staring. He had no idea how Michael could be accomplishing this. Blotting out the sun would be a huge expense of power; Lucifer couldn’t imagine a single archangel managing such a thing. If his mother had still been on Earth, he would’ve believed it of her; being Goddess of All Creation came with perks, after all. But She was safely tucked away in another universe, presumably creating Her own reality. That left God alone in this universe as the one Power. And He hadn’t shown an interest in His Earthly creation is ages.

What was Michael getting up to? And how was he doing it?

With a sigh, Lucifer hopped out of the Corvette, materializing his wings as soon as he was clear of the car’s body. He gave them a single stretch, working tightness out of the muscles before he gave a powerful flap, lifting from the garage floor and heading towards Hell.

The Gates of Hell were standing open when he arrived, his demons seemingly hard at work at their assigned tasks. The doors to the mausoleums of torture for the human souls imprisoning themselves in Hell with their own guilt were still shut. The demons not currently assigned to torturing the souls were creeping, scuttling, and oozing their ways across the plains of Hell far in the distance. The eternal twilight was undisturbed. Ash fell in a pattering rain from the deep grey sky. Everything looked normal.

Lucifer tucked his wings back into immateriality, giving his cuffs neatening tugs as he stepped deeper in Hell, his Louboutins making no noise as they pressed into the thin layer of ash that had built up on the rough stone floor. Lucifer moved through the uneven rock columns that made up much of the scenery in Hell, drifting between torture rooms as he looked for a demon to question.

One of the doors opened and a demon stepped out, shutting the door behind itself as it turned, jumping as its multi-faceted eyes landed on Lucifer.

“Luce – M-my Lord,” it rasped, its back pressing against the closed door behind it. “We did not expect to see you in Hell again so soon.”

“Hello, Belios. Let’s just say I didn’t like to leave Hell untended for too long,” Lucifer said, moving closer to the cowering demon.

“As you say, my Lord,” the demon responded, its multi-faceted eyes glittering in the low light. It rubbed several slimy tentacles together as it hesitated, obviously unsure how to proceed with the Lord of Hell standing in front of it.

“I’m seeking information, Belios. Have you heard whispers from your brothers and sisters about the human sun going out?” Lucifer asked, stopping just in front of the creature before him. It was hard to read the expression on such an alien face, all glittering multifaceted eyes and foot-long fangs, but he’d had millennia to learn the faces and expressions of all of Lilith’s children. He could tell that Belios was nervous.

“The sun? The star of the Earth?” Belios asked. “No, my Lord. No whispers of the sun.”

“Mmm,” Lucifer said. He had the sneaking suspicion there was something the demon was holding back from him. “Belios. What is it you don’t want to tell me?”

“Tell…tell you? I don’t…I don’t…” The demons rasping words trailed off and Lucifer heard it gulp nervously.

“Belios.”

“Y-your brother has been here,” Belios said in a rush.

“Amenadiel?” Lucifer asked. “I know; I _sent_ him here.”

“No, one of your other brothers. Michael.”

Lucifer’s face twisted in fury at the confession and the demon cringed back, its gelatinous body pressing against the door of the torture room behind it.

“Is he here now?” Lucifer asked. He could have expanded his awareness to scan the reaches of Hell, but he felt sure that it would be a waste of time; he knew Michael wasn’t there any longer. The archangel would have completed his mischief and scarpered long since. Still, it didn’t hurt to ask.

“No, Lucifer, he left.”

“And do you know _why_ he was here?” Lucifer asked.

“I did not speak with him, my Lord,” Belios said, gesturing back at the torture room behind it with one tentacle. “I was working.”

“Right. Well…carry on.” Lucifer turned, walking away from the demon with quick, sharp steps. Michael had been in Hell. Whatever he was doing on Earth had to be tied to Hell in some way.

Lucifer did not want to take the time to question all the demons of Hell just then, though; he needed to get back to his Detective. If Michael wasn’t here, then there were only two possibilities: he had returned to Heaven or he was back on Earth. If he was on Earth, there was every chance he would go after Chloe again. He’d already demonstrated he had a special interest in her. Lucifer would not give Michael a second chance at her.

He unfurled his wings, the white feathers almost glowing in the dimness of Hell, and took off for the Earth again.

* * *

Chloe was able to park just outside the edge of the second murder scene. The criminal had apparently had the decency to do their murdering in a parking lot, meaning that there were plenty of open spaces in the cordoned off lot for the officers to park their cars while the scene was active.

Chloe felt a wave of fear sweeping over her as she climbed out of her car and looked over a scene that was horribly familiar: one body and more blood than a single body could hold.

The tech on the scene wasn’t Ella, and Chloe walked over to the unfamiliar young man, introducing herself. “Detective Decker. Tell me what happened here.”

“The victim is Jonas Aimes. It looks like his ex-wife ambushed him here at his car,” the tech said, pointing to the Buick parked right beside the body. Aimes was collapsed next to the driver’s door and a set of keys were resting just beyond his hand, half in the puddle of blood that had spread out from his body. “It looks like she shot him and then shot herself, but maybe had second thoughts. Her blood is over here along with the murder weapon and her purse, but she’s not here.”

The fear that had been bubbling in her stomach since she pulled onto the scene was getting worse. Two scenes where the murderer had been grievously wounded but fled the scene immediately after? It could just be a coincidence, but Chloe had a feeling it wasn't. She didn't want to name her suspicions yet, but it was definitely getting harder to ignore the possibilities hovering like spectres in the back of her mind.

“Anything else?” Chloe asked, her voice tight with the stress she was fighting to keep out of her expression.

“I’m still working the scene,” the tech confessed. “But I’m guessing if Abigail Lewis – that’s Aimes’ ex-wife – was as hurt as the blood puddle indicates, we’re gonna find her body somewhere in the area, probably not more than a few blocks away.”

“I’ll get some uniforms on it,” Chloe said, stepping back. “I need to make a phone call, but let me know once you finish processing the scene.”

Chloe had her phone out and was dialing Dan’s number before she finished speaking. She nibbled at the edge of her thumbnail as the call rang out, breathing a little too quickly as her body tightened as if she were going into battle rather than just standing in a parking lot and overseeing a crime scene.

Dan picked up after enough rings that Chloe had begin to expect his voicemail.

“Little busy right now, Chlo,” Dan said, sounding distracted.

“I’m sorry, Dan, I just need to ask you a question,” Chloe said, lowering her hand from her mouth, fingers tapping a rapid pattern against her thigh. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from twitching.

“All right, what’s up?”

“The murders you’ve been dealing with today. Anything unusual about them?”

“Not really,” Dan said. “Pretty run-of-the-mill. One was a domestic violence case that went too far. Husband was injured but not badly enough to keep him from getting out of there –”

“How do you know he was injured?” Chloe interrupted.

“He left a pretty significant amount of blood behind. His wife used a steak knife to try and defend herself, not that it saved her in the end.”

“Okay, and the scene you’re working now?”

“Looks like a robbery gone wrong,” Dan said. “Store owner is dead behind the counter with a shotgun beside him. He must’ve winged the robber, because there’s a good amount of blood spray, but he obviously didn’t kill the guy because the criminal is in the wind.”

“So, at both scenes you have blood from two people, but only one body?” Chloe asked, her heart thundering.

“Yep.” Dan paused for a second and then some quickly. “Okay, yeah, that actually is a little weird.”

“Yes, it is,” Chloe said, her voice thin. “Hey, I’m going to be taking Trixie to my mom’s house when she gets out of school. I think a visit with Grandma for the next few days will be the best thing for her.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Dan said. “I’m guessing we’re gonna be pretty busy for awhile. You’ve…you’ve seen the news about the sun?”

“Hard to miss it,” Chloe said, trying to make her voice light. She couldn’t stop herself from squinting up at the sun, despite the fact that she couldn’t see any difference in it at all. She looked away quickly, blinking the dark spots from her vision as she added, “Hopefully it doesn’t last.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, and Chloe could hear the fear in his voice, too. “Hopefully. I gotta get back to work, Chlo.”

“All right.” Chloe hung up and turned back to her own scene.

Four cases where there was enough blood to indicate two victims, but there was only one body. Four scenes where the victim’s body was left behind while the perpetrator was on the run. Four scenes where the innocent person remained and the guilty one was gone.

She needed to talk to Lucifer.

For now, though, she needed to work the scene. Chloe shoved her phone back into the pocket of her pants and she waved a pair of uniformed officers over to send them out to scout for Abigail Lewis. She was fairly certain she’d be sending them on a wild goose chase, but she needed to go through the motions. Until she had confirmation of her fears, she needed to pretend everything was normal.


	3. Chapter 3

Lucifer called Chloe as soon as he was back on the mortal plane, standing on the roof of a multistory building downtown as he shrugged his wings back into immateriality, listening to his call ring out. He stared at the sun as he listened to the distant buzz of the call trying to connect, noting how the dark spot had grown in the short time he'd been down in Hell. Easily half of the sun was now in shadow, like some kind of bizarre and unscheduled eclipse.

The call connected and Lucifer dragged his eyes off the sun, focusing on the call as he looked down at the shiny toes of his Louboutins.

“Lucifer! We need to talk.”

He felt alarm slide through him at the tension in her voice as much as the words she used. He hadn’t been gone that long; what could have possibly happened in the time that he was gone?

“I agree,” he said. “Michael is in neither Heaven nor Hell, though he’s been seen both places. He’s been a busy bee, it seems.”

“Maybe in more ways than you know,” Chloe said, her tone unhappy. “I can’t really talk about it right now, though; I’m still working a scene. But I’ll be picking Trixie up from school in about thirty minutes, and I’m planning to drive her out to my mom’s house so she can spend the next few days there; my mom actually sounded happy to have the distraction right now.”

“Then come by my penthouse once you’ve dropped the little urchin off; we can have an early dinner and talk.”

There was a silence from the other end of the phone, and he could picture Chloe’s expression: hesitant and torn, wanting to spend time with him while also unwilling to abandon her duty as a police detective.

“You do still need to eat, even during an emergency,” he reminded her. “We can combine two necessities to limit how much time you have to take away from work.”

“Right. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I’ll text you when I’m ten minutes out from Lux, then.”

“Lovely,” Lucifer said. “Then I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Right. ‘Bye,” Chloe said, and disconnected the call. Lucifer cast another baleful glance at the occluded sun before turning to head for Lux. He had a few hours to himself; he could spend them chasing his own tail in a useless attempt at tracking Michael, or he could take a mental health break and lose himself in music and alcohol in his penthouse. He hadn’t lived for several millennia without learning when to take a moment of offered peace in the midst of chaos, and his piano would most certainly give succor to his soul.

* * *

Chloe leaned heavily against the wall of the private elevator as she rode up to Lucifer’s penthouse above the piano bar and nightclub he owned. She hated shifting any more work onto the other detectives in the precinct, but she was planning on heading back to the precinct to work on paperwork from the cases she’d gotten that day as soon as she finished talking with Lucifer. She’d talked to Dan briefly before entering Lux, and he’d updated her on what she’d missed while taking Trixie to her mom’s house.

Both violent and nonviolent crimes were increasing. It was just barely past 5pm, but the dimness of the sun had made sunset the same as twilight, emboldening those who usually waited for darkness to break the law. Even people who normally were law-abiding were panicking at the darkening sun, breaking into fistfights and smashing into one another on the roadways with increased frequency.

Chloe suspected she would not be getting much sleep that night. Hell, she might not even be able to address the paperwork for the two murders she’d been assigned that day; it was possible she’d have a stack of cases waiting on her as soon as she stepped back into the precinct.

She raised her hands, rubbing them over her forehead and sighing. The soft chime of the elevator reaching the top floor made her drop her hands from her face and push herself off the wall, stepping forward. She gave a little jump as the doors slid open to reveal Lucifer standing directly in front of them, a smile on his face and a white take-out bag hanging from one hand, the side spotted with grease.

“Perfect timing, Detective! Dinner just arrived five minutes ago; it should still be hot.”

She stared at him for a moment and then stepped forward, ducking past the offered bag of fast food and pressing herself against him, wrapping her arms around him and resting one cheek against his chest as she released a long breath. After a startled moment, Lucifer wrapped his free arm around her.

“Detective?” He sounded unsure of how to proceed, and Chloe gave a weak laugh.

“I just…I needed a hug. I think…I think things are about to get really, really bad, Lucifer. I just needed a hug.”

The arm around her back tightened and she felt his head lower until his chin rested on top of her head. Some of the tension bled out of her as she breathed deeply, taking in the warm scent of his skin and the expensive but subtle cologne he always wore. They stood for several minutes, Chloe stealing the time that she could before they got down to business. As soon as their conversation wrapped up, she knew she had to get back to work, and she _needed_ a break, perhaps more than she needed to eat.

Her stomach snarled loudly enough that Lucifer huffed a soft laugh into her hair. Okay, perhaps she didn’t need the hug as much as she needed to eat.

“Come on, Detective. Let me feed you and catch you up.” Lucifer stepped back a bit, keeping his hand resting gently on her hip as he looked down to meet her gaze, his dark eyes full of something soft and gentle that Chloe couldn’t put a name to.

“I need to catch you up, too,” Chloe pointed out, and Lucifer stepped away, moving over to the leather couches in the living room area, opening the fast food bag as he moved.

“You will eat while I talk, and then you can tell me whatever you need to tell me. You need food.”

“Okay, fine, I will eat,” Chloe said, trailing after the scent of hot fries and burgers, watching Lucifer lay the food out on top of the low glass coffee table. “Can I get some water, too? I haven’t had a chance to drink anything for hours.”

Lucifer lifted an unopened bottle of spring water from the couch, raising his brows slightly as a grin ticked up one corner of his lips.

Chloe sank to the couch, holding back to groan of relief she wanted to voice as she let herself relax into the cushions. She reached out, grabbing a handful of fries from the paper dish closest to her, shoving several into her mouth. Lucifer’s faint grin grew and he settled across from her, lifting a tumbler of some dark liquid from the coffee table and taking a sip as he watched her eating.

“Right. So, as I said before, no one in the Silver City knows what Michael is up to. I took a trip down to Hell to check if he was perhaps hiding down there; it has never been closed to celestials, after all. Most just avoid it on principle.” Lucifer made a face, taking another sip of his drink before he continued. “He had been there, but was no longer there when I arrived. Everything seemed to be operating normally, based on the brief time I spent there; I have to assume that wherever he’s hiding, it’s somewhere on Earth.”

Chloe swallowed the mouthful of burger she’d been chewing, lowering it to the coffee table with an alarmed expression. “He’d been to Hell?”

“Yes, although I can’t guess his purpose,” Lucifer admitted.

“I might be able to,” Chloe said, the words slow and heavy. She met Lucifer’s interested gaze, her own brows drawing down. “Both of my murders today and two of Dan’s involved two victims at each scene, but only one body.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Lucifer asked, looking puzzled.

“At all the crimes, the victim’s body remained behind, but the perpetrator was gone, despite leaving a significant amount of blood at the scene.” Chloe paused for a second, watching slow-dawning horror moving across Lucifer’s expression. “The guilty person was gone, despite having lost enough blood to have potentially died.”

“I hope you aren’t suggesting what I think you’re suggesting,” Lucifer said, his voice faint.

“I think demons are taking possession of the guilty dead,” Chloe said, and Lucifer closed his eyes for a moment, his face tightening at her words. Chloe swallowed hard, trying to tighten down on her own emotional reactions as she continued. “I think they’ve decided that…that since you aren’t in Hell anymore, they can do what they want again.”

And there it was. Their greatest fear spoken out loud: Lucifer having to return to Hell to keep the demons in line, something coming in between them yet again just when things seem to be moving forward in their relationship.

“No.” Lucifer’s voice was very soft, but very final.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense –” Chloe began, but Lucifer cut her off.

“ _No!_ ” The word was a roar, and Chloe’s eyes went huge as alarm speared through her. “I _will not_ give up my life again! I have given up enough – too much – time and time again. I have done as He bade me for thousands of years, been the monster He asked me to be and bowed to His desires. I am _done_ bowing! I don’t…I don’t deserve to be punished again.”

“No, you don’t,” Chloe whispered, leaning out across the glass coffee table to rest her fingertips on one of his knees. He looked down at the point of contact, his brow furrowed and his mouth tight. “You don’t deserve it. Neither do I. But, Lucifer…we can’t change what _is_.”

Lucifer looked up again, his eyes meeting Chloe’s, and she did not miss the shine of tears hanging heavy in them. “But I almost…we were so _close_.”

Chloe rose from the couch, taking her fingertips off his knee as she came around the coffee table to sit beside him, wrapping her arms around him as her own eyes stung with sudden tears. She lowered her face, pressing her forehead against his chest, trying to hide her face. She fought to keep her voice even as she spoke. “I know. It doesn’t matter, though. You know that, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re here or there. I still love you.”

His arms went around her, crushing her to him, and his lips pressed to the top of her head. She leaned back, looking up into his beautiful face, and his lips met hers with a heavy intensity, demanding. She didn’t hold back, returning the kiss with force, her fingers clenching tight against the material of his expensive cotton button-up shirt, clinging to him as if she could somehow keep him from leaving if she just held tightly enough.

The kisses were no less passionate than the ones they had shared the night before, sitting on the piano bench across the room, giving in to the possibility of being with one another finally, after such a long time of dancing around one another. These kisses, though, were full of desperation, acknowledging the reality that it was possible they would get no more time together after this.

When they finally broke apart, breathing hard, Chloe realized her cheeks were cool and wet; the tears that had been threatening to fall had broken free somewhere in the middle of the kisses, trailing unnoticed down her cheeks. Lucifer drew one arm from around her, using the knuckle of his forefinger to gently wipe the tear tracks from her face, his dark eyes locked on her face as if drinking her in, memorizing her.

“I agree that it seems likely…but it’s not the only possibility,” he said, his voice low. “I’ll go down and check, but I will be _right back_. This is not good-bye, Chloe.”

She felt her chest tighten as he spoke her name and another tear slipped free. He gently wiped it away, too, before leaning down to press a soft, chaste kiss to her lips. He slid off the couch, stepping to the tall glass balcony doors and pushing them open. Chloe rose to follow him, sniffling softly and rubbing one palm across her lashes to dry them. It was hard to see him in the darkness; night had fully fallen while they’d been talking and eating, and there wasn’t enough light for her to make out much more than the outline of him and the faint smudge of his features in the dark.

“I’ll only be a moment,” he promised, and then his huge white wings seemed to almost explode into existence, shining in the glow from the stars above and the city lights below, almost appearing to create their own light. She watched with a kind of helpless fascination as he gave a mighty flap, the wind of their movement blowing her hair back from her face. She watched him until he was out of sight and then sighed, wrapping her arms around herself against the growing chill of the night air as she turned and stepped back into the penthouse.

She needed to get back to the precinct…but she didn’t want to leave until she knew if Lucifer would be coming back or not. Surely she could spend a little longer…?

She sat back down on the couch, reaching for her burger again. She was no longer that hungry, but she knew that she wouldn’t be getting many chances to eat over the next few days, especially if the darkening of the sun continued. She needed to eat while she could.

She took an unenthusiastic bite and chewed, swallowing without enjoying it. She was raising the burger to take another bite when the sound of huge wings dragged her gaze to the balcony. She dropped the burger on the coffee table, hurrying around the couch towards the balcony.

“Lucifer! That really _was_ only a moment.”

Lucifer hesitated a moment, still standing on the balcony. Chloe stepped out to join him, struggling to make out his expression in the darkness. He wasn’t speaking and fear lanced through her.

“What…what is it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light. “Is it…is it bad?”

“It might be,” he said slowly, taking a single step closer to her. She had only a second to realize that his voice lacked its usual British accent before he had moved close enough for the lights from inside the penthouse to illuminate his face. It was a faint, diffuse light, but it was enough for her to see the scar cutting across the familiar features.

“Michael,” she whispered.

Chloe’s heart leaped into a hammering tempo as she stumbled back into the penthouse. Her hip hit the couch and she slid around it, trying to put distance between them. But he pursued her, reaching out to grab her wrist in an unbreakable grip. She fumbled with her free hand at her hip, jerking her service revolver free from its holster.

“Really, Chloe?” Michael asked, a laugh in his voice as he used his own free hand to jerk the weapon from her grip, tossing it onto the couch and out of reach. “Haven’t we been through this whole thing before where you shoot me and it doesn’t do anything more than annoy me?”

“Let me go,” Chloe snarled, jerking her arm. It didn’t do anything more than move Michael’s arm a little, despite the fact that she’d put her entire weight behind the move.

“No, that’s not happening. I need you.” Michael dragged her closer, Chloe fighting every single step despite the fact that it was doing absolutely nothing. She would not go willingly, no matter that she couldn’t change a single thing about this situation.

“What the hell have you been doing?” she snarled as he took a step backwards, dragging her back onto the balcony. “You _are_ responsible for what’s happening to the sun, aren’t you?”

“You got me,” Michael said lightly, grinning faintly. “And it wasn’t easy.”

“Why are you doing this?” Chloe asked, still jerking futilely at his grip on her wrist.

“Because humans, every single one of you, is _so_ scared of the dark. It's useful for me to have everyone scared,” Michael said. “Not that it matters; the knowledge isn’t going to help _you_. Especially now.”

“Why ‘especially now’?” Chloe asked, glaring at him in the dim starlight, barely able to make out his wide smile in the night.

“Because you’re about to stop being a part of this equation. There’s a chance – just a small one, but the chance _is_ there – that my brother will get back in time, which is the only reason I can do…this.”

Chloe didn’t have a chance to react as Michael scooped his free arm behind her, using that plus his grip on her wrist to lift her. He huffed slightly, and lifted her higher, stepping forward until his shoes bumped the glass of the balcony railings. And then she was falling, the wind whipping her hair into her face as she tumbled from the top floor of Lux towards the ground far below.

* * *

Lucifer sighed as he stepped back into the eternal twilight of Hell, glancing around. Everything still looked exactly the same as it had when he’d been there only hours before: demons busily scuttling around, the torture mausoleums shut tight, ash raining from the cloud-darkened sky.

If demons were returning to Earth in the bodies of the guilty dead, Lucifer knew it was likely that Dromos would be involved. He had been at the head of a group of demons that had gone to Earth thousands of years before – in Hell’s timeline. On Earth, it had been only a couple of months since demons had roamed the streets of LA. They had been there to look for him, originally, and then to kidnap Amenadiel’s half-angel son, Charlie, when it became obvious Lucifer had no plans to return to ruling Hell any time soon. He had spent the last few thousand years terrorizing the demons that had dared to break his edict against possession, but it was possible the lessons hadn’t stuck.

Lucifer raised his voice, putting the push of the power inherent to all celestials behind it as he bellowed into the silent reaches of Hell. “Dromos! I summon you!”

The demon in question took only moments to appear, moving at a fast trot on clawed paws, the tentacles crowning his head waving like an ocean plant as he moved close to Lucifer, blinking goat-pupiled eyes. “Lucifer. Rumors had you back on Earth.”

“I have been. It was meant to be a brief trip. I’m here now,” Lucifer said, forcing a casual and unconcerned smile to his face as he stared at the slightly taller demon. “I came back just now because I needed to speak with you.”

Alarm crossed Dromos’ wide-featured face, and the demon’s pupils shrank.

“You were one of the first to decide to ignore my edict against human possession,” Lucifer said, taking his eyes off of Dromos to fiddle with one cufflink, feigning disinterest in the demon.

“And I have prostrated myself before you a thousand times over for that,” Dromos said quickly, bending his legs slightly as if preparing to do so once more.

“You have, yes,” Lucifer said, his voice still calm and casual. “Given your position in the demon rebellion against my orders, though, I thought you would perhaps know if others had taken it upon themselves to try the same trick again when my back was temporarily turned towards Hell.”

“M-my Lord?” Dromos stuttered.

Lucifer looked up from his cuff, the smile dropping off his face. When he spoke, the casual tone was gone, replaced with a cold intensity that made the demon cringe back. “What do you know about demons taking possession of dead humans, Dromos?”

“I know it is forbidden, Lucifer. You reminded me of this…enthusiastically. I know that few would dare the wrath of the Lord of Hell by disobeying direct commands.”

Lucifer frowned slightly and then gave his head a minute shake. “You’ve heard no rumors of anyone disobeying me, then?”

“No, Lucifer.”

Relief washed over Lucifer and he fought to keep it from showing in his expression as he gave a brief flick of the fingers on one hand. “Return to your duties, Dromos.”

The demon scampered away, disappearing amidst the stone pillars and torture rooms with speed, leaving Lucifer standing alone. He saw curious demons peeking out at him from their hiding places around the torture mausoleums, but he did not respond to any of them.

If it weren’t demons returning to Earth, then he was not currently needed down in Hell. It left him and Chloe with the puzzle of disappearing human bodies, though. He didn’t think it could be a coincidence that it was happening at the same time that Michael was darkening the sun. _Something_ was causing the guilty dead to get up and walk away from their crime scenes, and it probably was something of Michael’s design. He would have to get back to his Detective; they had a mystery to solve.

Lucifer unfurled his wings and left Hell behind with only a few powerful beats of them, the eternal heat and twilight of Hell fading as he traveled between the realms, bursting onto the mortal plane, breathing deep of the smell of car exhaust and fried food as he appeared in the LA night sky near Lux. He aimed himself at the balcony, cutting through the cool air accompanied by the sound of heavy wingbeats.

That was when he saw the form falling. It was several feet down from the balcony, gaining speed as gravity took hold. The sound of the scream hit his ears then, and he recognized the voice, despite the distance and the sound of absolute terror filling it.

“ _Detective!_ ” His shout was so forceful that it hurt his throat, tearing from him even as he folded his wings tight to his back, arrowing after her.

It was like the nightmare he’d had thousands of years before, after his wings first came back after thousands upon thousands of years without them. His Detective was falling, helpless to stop her deadly plummet towards the unforgiving sidewalk below, and he was trying to conquer inevitability, reaching towards her with desperate hands.

She saw him, her flailing arms suddenly shooting up towards him, fingers straining. The wind beating into his face was almost painfully intense, his eyes tearing up as he squinted against the buffeting force of it. He could still see how close they were to the sidewalk. He could make out faces of the pedestrians now; any second, one would look up and see them. And then his Detective would hit the pavement and he would…he would…

His fingers brushed her wrist and he gripped it, jerking hard on her arm as he pulled her closer to him, his arms going around her as he spread his wings and sent them skimming just above the tops of the cars, flapping hard to gain altitude again, lifting them quickly back into the star-speckled sky. He didn’t hear screams or gasps below; no one had seen them.

His Detective was sobbing against his chest, her breaths coming in deep, desperate gasps between the wracking sobs that shook her entire body. Her fingers were gripping the front of his shirt so hard that they were causing the seams to cut into the skin beneath his arms, but he didn’t care. Lucifer could not hold her any tighter than he already was, but he pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head as he flew back to the balcony of his penthouse, setting down onto the platform easily, bending his knees slightly to further soften the landing for the human woman in his arms.

He stepped into the penthouse in a few quick steps, lowering her to the couch. She did not let go of his shirt, still sucking air in loud, gasping breaths, shaking hard against him.

“Detective. It’s all right. I’m here. You’re safe. I caught you. You’re safe, Detective.” Lucifer kept his voice soft, speaking the words in a low, gentle voice, keeping one arm wrapped around her shoulders while the other raised to wipe away the wetness of tears on her face. She didn’t seem to be fully aware that they were back in the penthouse, her fingers still clenching the front of his shirt as if it were her only lifeline in a stormy sea. He kept murmuring to her until her breathing slowed and she finally blinked a few times, seeming to realize they were truly safe.

“Lucifer,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

“I’m here, Detective,” he repeated. “You’re safe.”

Her fingers slowly released the front of his shirt. A few buttons had torn free and it felt like the seam beneath his left arm had torn, but he didn’t care; what was one $400 shirt to the life of his Detective?

“What happened?” he asked. “How did you fall? Did the safety rails give way?”

He glanced back towards the balcony, looking for the spot where she might have fallen, but her words stopped him, drawing his eyes immediately back to her face.

“Michael was here. He…he threw me over.”

There was a beat of silence as Lucifer stared at her in disbelief, and then he snarled two words. “He _what?_ ”

“He came right after you left. I thought he _was_ you for a second.” Chloe shook her head, raising her hands to shove her hair back from her face, her fingers still shaking. “He dragged me to the balcony and he lifted me up and…and…”

The fury rising in him felt molten, so hot that it actually hurt him to feel it. He hadn’t been this furious since he’d first Fallen. He could feel the anger pulsing through him with each beat of his heart, his hands shaking with the need to break something.

“I really _will_ kill him,” Lucifer whispered, pushing away from the couch and rising to his feet, turning towards the balcony.

“Stop! Lucifer, you…what if he comes back?” Chloe’s voice shook, and the sound of her fear stopped Lucifer in mid-step, holding him in indecision as he struggled with the warring desires to comfort his Detective and to punish Michael.

After a few seconds, though, he realized the decision was easy. He would not leave his Detective unprotected. He was not going to walk away when she was this scared. No matter how much he wanted to hurt his brother, his need to comfort Chloe was stronger.

He moved back to the couch, settling on the cushion beside her, pulling her gently into his arms. “I won’t leave,” he said, taking slow, deep breaths as he fought to push his anger down, to control it until he could release it on his brother. “I’ll stay with you as long as you need me.”

Chloe pulled back slightly, looking up into his face. Her blue eyes were wide and he could see hope slowly filling them as she met his gaze. “You’re staying? Then…the demons…?”

“I found Dromos. He was responsible for the last infestation, and he denied knowledge of another now. If there were demons coming to Earth, I am certain Dromos would know of it.”

“Then you don’t have to stay in Hell?” Chloe asked, a smile slowly taking over her face.

“No, Detective. I’m staying with you.”

She practically threw herself at him, startling him with the kiss, but he relaxed into it almost immediately. She tasted of tears, but Lucifer kissed her until there was no sorrow left in her, stroking his hands across her back in a mixture of comfort and longing. When she finally broke the kiss several minutes later, she curled against his chest and closed her eyes, letting a long sigh out as she relaxed. Slowly, Lucifer laid back against the couch, settling with her, eyes ticking to the shimmer of stars in the sky outside the open balcony doors. There was so much they needed to do…but for now, he would take this moment with his Detective.


	4. Chapter 4

Chloe woke up to find herself collapsed against Lucifer on one of the couches in his penthouse, the stars still twinkling in the sky visible outside the glass balcony doors. She felt surprisingly refreshed, considering she could only have been asleep for a few hours; it was still midnight-dark outside. It might not be too late to stop by the precinct, though; she could get a few hours of paperwork done before she headed home to get a few more hours of sleep before the day started.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket to check to time, and couldn’t stop the shocked exclamation. “6:45am?!”

Lucifer startled awake, jerking upright with an undignified snort. He blinked rapidly several times before raising a hand to rub at his eyes. “Detective. I must’ve dozed off for a minute.”

“Try ten hours!” Chloe said, thrusting her glowing cell screen towards him. His eyes went wide as he took in the time and then he spun, staring out at the night-dark sky speckled with shining stars.

“No.” The word was a whisper, and Lucifer pushed off the couch slowly, moving towards the still-open balcony doors almost hesitantly. Chloe followed him, feeling the same sinking horror as she realized what it meant. It was 6:45am; the sun should be rising. The sky should be paling towards purple-blue on the horizon…but it was still as dark as midnight outside. There was no variation in the blackness of the sky beyond the icy twinkling of far-distant stars.

“The sun,” Chloe said, her voice weak. “It’s…”

“It’s gone dark,” Lucifer finished. He turned to look at her, his expression bleak. “He’s done it.”

* * *

Lucifer refused to let Chloe go to work without him, not with Michael having made two attempts to get to her in the last few days, and Chloe finally gave in. He rode in her police-issued vehicle to her apartment, remaining on guard inside the apartment while she took the fastest shower of her life, pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and threw on clean clothes.

The drive to the precinct was silent, both of them staring out the windows at a world both alien and familiar. After all, LA at night was nothing new. But LA at night during the day was jarring, and neither of them could fully relax, despite the fact that the normal Wednesday-morning-work-exodus traffic was missing and allowed them a peaceful drive to the precinct.

As soon as Chloe stepped into the bullpen, though, a uniform approached her with a file folder in his hands. “Detective, great timing. We just caught a body.”

“Looks like another busy day,” Lucifer murmured, leaning close to Chloe’s ear, and she sighed softly.

“At least we got some rest last night,” she murmured back, taking the file from the uni and opening it to glance over the details. “That’s the only thing that’s going to keep today from being a complete nightmare.”

“Luci!”

Amenadiel’s familiar voice boomed across the tense bullpen, causing heads to turn all over the room. Amenadiel didn’t seem to notice, moving in huge, ground-eating strides as he hurried over to join Chloe and Lucifer. He lowered his voice as he got to them, but only slightly.

“I just got back. I went straight to your penthouse, but I couldn’t find you. Glad I caught you here.”

“Got back?” Chloe asked, tucking the file folder under her arm.

“From the Silver City,” Amenadiel explained, his face grave. “Michael keeps popping in and out of Heaven; many of our siblings have seen him in passing, but he isn’t staying long enough for any of them to talk to him. His motives remain a mystery, although given the pervasive darkness when I got back, I’m guessing he’s achieved at least one of his goals.”

“Yes,” Lucifer said grimly, glancing towards the floor-to-ceiling glass panels that made up the front wall of the bullpen. The street lights and stars were the only source of light coming through them, and Lucifer frowned. “I may have an idea of at least one of his desires: he’s been very interested in Chloe the last few days.”

Amenadiel cast a thoughtful glance at Chloe. She grimaced faintly, shaking her head a little. “Yeah, he’s become the worst kind of stalker.”

“The kind that tries to kill you,” Lucifer said, anger creeping into his voice. He raised a hand to rest it lightly on Chloe’s back, and she leaned into the touch gratefully, still feeling shaken after her fall the night before.

“What?” Amenadiel asked, his eyes going wide as he glanced between them. “But…celestials _can’t_ kill humans!”

“Yeah, he had a workaround for that,” Chloe said, her voice low and shaking, betraying her tension. She reached one hand up to smooth over the crown of her head as if flattening down flyaways, just needing to do _something_ with her hands. She pulled the file folder out from under her arm, gripping it tightly with both hands. “He said…he said that there was a chance Lucifer would get back ‘in time,’ and that was the only reason he could do what he did.”

“What _did_ he do?” Amenadiel asked, his face going almost as darkly angry as Lucifer’s.

“He…he…” Chloe couldn’t make the words come out. She swallowed hard, dropping her eyes down to the bright yellow of the file folder in her hands.

“He threw her over the balcony of my penthouse,” Lucifer said, each word clipped.

Amenadiel’s entire body went tight, the muscles standing out in sharp relief. His hands clenched at his sides, and he whispered, “He _threw her…?_ ”

“Mmm,” Lucifer murmured. “Obviously, I _did_ make it back in time, but barely. I was lucky I didn’t dislocate her shoulder grabbing her in the middle of the fall. I’d gone down to Hell to verify that none of the demons were possessing humans again –”

“What?” Amenadiel interrupted, his anger dropping into shock instantly.

“There’ve been some weird deaths lately,” Chloe confessed, raising her eyes from the file folder to meet Amenadiel’s startled gaze. “The crime scenes have enough blood to indicate that there should be two bodies, but the perpetrator in all the crimes has been missing from the scene.”

“Lucifer, if demons are possessing humans again, I have to get back to Charlie,” Amenadiel said, already turning.

“They aren’t,” Lucifer said quickly. “At least, from what I was able to gather in Hell, that isn’t what’s happening. I don’t know _what’s_ happening, but I have been reassured that demons aren’t involved.”

There was a pause as they all looked at one another, and Chloe finally cleared her throat, taking a step closer to Amenadiel, keeping her voice very low. “You told Lucifer that Hell didn’t need him anymore. Can you…can you explain what that means?”

“I heard Father,” Amenadiel said, his face softening into an almost-smile. “He _spoke_ to me, after thousands of years of silence. He told me ‘Hell no longer needs a warden.’”

“And you’re sure it was…um, God?” Chloe asked, realizing just how bizarre the question was as it was leaving her lips. Were they seriously talking about hearing _God_ speaking to you? Then again, she was asking an archangel while standing beside the literal Devil, so maybe it wasn’t as bizarre as all that.

“Chloe. I _do_ know my own father’s voice,” Amenadiel chided, and Chloe held up a single hand soothingly.

“Okay, I just had to ask. Look, I need to get going – this scene needs a detective and I’m the only one here,” Chloe said, casting a quick look around the bullpen.

“Just a moment, Detective,” Lucifer said, touching her bare wrist with the tips of his fingers. “I’ll join you; I just need to speak to Amenadiel.”

Chloe gave him a doubtful look and then moved over to her desk, sitting a hip on it as she flipped the folder open again, reading through the information as she waited for him.

“I spoke to Maze shortly after I returned to Earth after the years in Hell,” Lucifer said, speaking quickly. “She said that Michael’s goal in coming to Earth and stepping into my life was to destroy it. I have to assume that this is all a continuation of that, writ large. Darkening the Earth and killing Chloe would absolutely achieve that goal.”

“Of course, you think it’s all about you,” Amenadiel said, sighing softly. Then he grimaced, adding, “Although, given Michael’s lifelong obsession with you, you might be right this time.”

Lucifer spread his arms in a ‘there you have it’ gesture, raising his eyebrows.

“Given that,” Amenadiel said, glancing over to where Chloe was shooting looks at them with increasing frequency, the impatience writ clearly across her face, “I don’t think you should leave Michael any more openings to get at Chloe.”

“I don’t plan to,” Lucifer said grimly. “Right, I’ll try to keep you up to date on the search. Let me know if you find _anything_ that might help us find Michael.”

“Of course,” Amenadiel said, his eyes drawn to the dark mid-morning sky outside the precinct. “We need to solve this. Quickly.”

“Agreed,” Lucifer said, and then headed over to join Chloe. They had no leads on Michael; he might as well help solve a human murder.

They drove past three crashes on their way to the scene of the murder, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles cutting through the darkness of the morning. LA was beginning to fray around the edges, and Chloe had to assume the rest of the world was experiencing the same issues.

“Lucifer, this is just going to get worse and worse,” Chloe said as they passed the third crash, a sharp edge to her voice. “You and Amenadiel are angels; can’t you just…fix the sun?”

Lucifer snorted a soft laugh. “Your confidence in me is heartening, but misplaced, I’m afraid. Angels never had that kind of power. Honestly, it’s beyond me how he’s managed to block out the sun so completely, unless he has Dad’s blessing.”

“Oh, my God,” Chloe whispered. “Could…could that be what’s happening?”

“I very much doubt it,” Lucifer said, his voice turning soothing as he turned to meet Chloe’s frightened eyes. She only held his gaze for a second before turning her attention back to the road; the traffic wasn’t heavy, but it was unpredictable. Humans did not do well in the dark, as Michael had pointed out, and many were behaving like frightened animals, ignoring traffic rules with no rhyme or reason. Chloe was driving even more cautiously than she normally did, but for once Lucifer had no scathing comments. Even he could recognize that the situation called for more caution than normal.

“I’ve heard you and Amenadiel talking about how…how God isn’t interested in Earth anymore. What if He’s decided He’s ready to be done with us?”

“Then I think He would just…end things,” Lucifer said, his voice thoughtful. “I don’t think slowly freezing the planet would beHhis choice of finishing this human experiment.”

Chloe didn’t have anything to say to that, her fear creeping through her like a snake, wrapping tightly around her heart. Lucifer looked at her for a long moment, seeming to realize what she was thinking, and he reached out to rest his palm gently on her thigh.

“Detective. Michael wants us scared. That’s how he likes to operate: through fear. Don’t let him into your head. We _will_ fix this, one way or another.”

Chloe glanced at Lucifer, meeting his eyes for a second, her own full of unspoken fears. He stroked the top of her thigh gently, giving what comfort he could, and slowly the fear bled from her expression, leaving only a faint furrow between her eyebrows.

“Of course. We’ve managed to beat unbeatable odds before. We can do this.” Chloe didn’t feel half as confident as she sounded, and she didn’t sound terribly confident. But at least she no longer felt like she was being squeezed to death by her own fear. “Anyway, we’re here. Let’s see if this scene is like the others.”

Chloe could feel her stomach sinking in dismay as she approached the scene, lit by bright scene lighting on tall poles placed at regular intervals around the perimeter. There was only one body that she could see, but there was enough blood shining darkly in the lights that she was pretty sure that this was going to be another two-victim scene. The bright lights caused the victim’s long blond hair to shine where it wasn’t soaking in the blood pooled around her. Her face was beautiful, marred only by the line of blood running from the corner of her mouth.

As she stepped close to the pool of light cast by the scene lights, she heard Lucifer’s hiss as he took in the sight. The sound was soft, but it caused Ella, crouched next to the body a few feet away, to lift her head and turn. Her dark eyes were troubled, and she didn’t greet them with her usual level of pep.

“Hey, guys. How’re you holding up this ‘morning’?” She added the air quotes with her gloved hands, her mouth quirking slightly in displeasure.

“Um, not great,” Chloe admitted.

“Better than she is,” Lucifer said, gesturing towards the victim. Ella glanced down and then back up, a faint smile ticking up one corner of her mouth.

“Yeah, no kidding. This is Melinda Lawrence, 24. She was mugged. It didn’t go great,” Ella said, her voice subdued. “Her boyfriend got off a lot easier than she did.”

“Wait, her boyfriend?” Chloe asked, a surge of adrenaline causing her heart to speed.

“Yeah, John Walters. He’s over there,” Ella said, indicating the ambulance on the edge of the scene with a nod of her head. “He’s the one who shot the mugger.”

“Non-fatal?” Chloe asked, realizing how stupid the question was even as it left her lips.

“I mean, apparently,” Ella said, her brows furrowing as she glanced around the area. “Given how much he bled, I don’t understand how he was able to get up and walk away, but that’s what the boyfriend is saying.”

“Thanks, Ella,” Chloe said, already walking towards the ambulance. Lucifer followed her, his steps as fast and purposeful as her own.

“John Walters?” Chloe asked as she reached the ambulance. A young, average-looking dark-haired man looked up, his face bleak and one eye sporting a darkening bruise.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice listless.

“I’m Detective Decker. Can you tell me what happened here?”

John glanced over to the body of Melinda, highlighted by all the lights shining down on her, and he winced before looking down into his lap. “I drove Melly to work this morning. With the sun…being like it is…I didn’t want her to go alone. We were running a little late, so she walked ahead while I was feeding the meter. She was halfway down the block before I was even able to get to the meter, though; Melly has always been so impatient…” He gave a little unhappy laugh. “I heard shouting when I was double-checking the doors were locked, before I was going to head after her. I ran as fast as I could, but they were struggling and…I guess Melly wasn’t willing to give up her purse. She must’ve thought I was going to save her. I have a concealed carry license, and I almost always have a gun on me. She…she wasn’t yelling for me or anything, just yelling at him to let go.”

John broke off, his lower lip trembling for a second. Chloe felt Lucifer take a step closer to her, the warmth of his body comforting in the chilly dark-morning air. They both knew where this story was going, and neither could ignore the urge to be a little closer to the other as they waited for the final blow to fall.

“He had a gun, too. He…shot her. As soon as I heard it, I stopped running and drew my own gun. I shot him, dead center. It was perfect. Just like being in the range. He dropped and I ran to Melly. She was…she was still…” He broke off, a choked sound exploding from him as he fought hard to keep his tears back, his body shaking with the effort. “She died while I was talking to her. I couldn’t do anything to help her.”

“And the mugger?” Chloe asked, her voice soft.

“That’s the weirdest thing,” John said, looking up with a puzzled expression, his eyes still shining with unshed tears. “I hit him dead center. It was a killing shot. But while I was…was with Melly…Melly’s body…he _got up_.”

“Wait, you mean he started moving?” Chloe asked.

“No,” John said, decisive. “He just sat straight up and then stood up and walked away like nothing had happened. He didn’t even take his gun.”

“Did he have a bulletproof vest?” Chloe asked.

“No one bleeds like that when they have a vest,” John said, shaking his head.

“When he sat up,” Lucifer cut in, taking a small step closer and catching John’s attention, “did he say anything? Do anything?”

“No, he just…he sat up and looked around, like he was trying to figure out where he was. Then he just got up and turned and walked away. It was so weird, I didn’t even go after him,” John said.

Lucifer stepped back, looking troubled, and Chloe gave John a quick nod and a murmured ‘thank you,’ along with instructions to give the uniformed officer nearby a full description of the mugger, before catching Lucifer’s sleeve and giving it a little tug to get his attention. She led him a few feet away from the scene, lowering her voice to avoid being overheard.

“What is it?” she asked, leaning a little closer to him. He responded by leaning a little closer to her, leaving barely a breath of space between them. Lucifer was so close, she felt the warmth of his skin radiating off of him.

“Either he’s giving us an inaccurate description of what he saw, or demons are most definitely possessing the dead,” Lucifer said, his voice low and intense.

“But you said that they weren’t,” Chloe said, alarmed and confused.

“Obviously, I was lied to, which I don’t understand at all. As King of Hell, demons shouldn’t be able to lie to me. Not directly. They can talk around things, they can twist the truth until it bears only a passing resemblance to itself, but they shouldn’t be able to _lie_.”

“Then…what?” Chloe asked.

“I have to go back to Hell and find out the truth,” Lucifer said, his tone grim. “But I don’t want to leave you unguarded, not with Michael so interested in you.”

“I could go with you,” Chloe suggested, and Lucifer grimaced.

“No! The only reason mortals would go to Hell is that they’ve died believing they deserve the punishment. The key word in that sentence is ‘died,’ Detective. Living mortals cannot visit Hell, no matter what the Greeks may have thought.”

“Okay, so I can’t go with you,” Chloe said, crossing her arms uncomfortably. She had zero desire to die, whether by taking a quick trip down to Hell or staying alone with Michael potentially stalking her at any given moment.

“I’ll phone Amenadiel,” Lucifer said, reaching for his cellphone.

“You can’t,” Chloe said quickly. “He’s not going to leave Linda and Charlie with everything going on, and I don’t want to endanger them by going to their house.”

“Right,” Lucifer said, sliding his phone back into an inner pocket of his suit jacket. “Well…what about Maze? She’s probably not a match for Michael in a prolonged fight, but I believe she would be able to keep him busy long enough for you to run. It’s not likely he can get to you very easily or reliably if you’re driving, so if he and Maze have to fight, you just keep driving until I let you know I’m back.”

“Right. That sounds…awful,” Chloe said, forcing a smile. “Once we wrap up the scene, we can meet up with Maze at my apartment.”

“I’ll call her and catch her up on all the details,” Lucifer said. “I imagine that even if she was out bounty hunting, the sudden lack of sunlight might have caught her attention and she’s probably back in the city by now.”

Chloe reached out, catching Lucifer’s hand in hers for a second. He didn’t hesitate, his fingers wrapping tight around hers in a gentle squeeze. She squeezed back and they separated, Chloe returning to the crime scene and Ella while Lucifer drew his phone out and stepped further into the night-dark morning to call Maze.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for posting so late today! The intense anxiety of....everything...has my ADHD extra ADHD-y, and I kept forgetting I had to actually POST the chapter to, you know, post the chapter.

The sound of Maze’s motorcycle announced her arrival before either Lucifer or Chloe saw her in the darkness. She pulled to a stop just outside the ring of emergency vehicles, pulling her helmet off and hanging it from the motorcycle’s handlebars before striding over to join Lucifer at the edge of the lights that highlighted the crime scene.

“You’re lucky I decided to come back to LA when the sun started going out,” Maze said, her tone grumpy as she glared up at Lucifer with narrowed eyes. “I was in Nebraska two days ago. I figured that something this big might be a thing you’d need my help with, though, so I started back.”

“And I’m glad you did,” Lucifer said. “I need you to watch over the Detective for me.”

“…guard duty,” Maze said flatly. “You called me here for _guard duty?_ ”

“I have to return to Hell. I believe that demons are possessing dead humans again, despite Dromos telling me he hadn’t heard of any such thing happening.”

“Again?” Maze said, sounding annoyed. “So, either Dromos doesn’t know it’s happening…”

“Or he lied to me,” Lucifer filled in, giving a brief nod.

“He can’t,” Maze objected, a look of pure disbelief on her face. “You’re our King.”

“Well, a lot of impossible things have been happening lately,” Lucifer said, glancing up into the sky, the darkness broken only by the shine of the stars. “Michael has been trying to kill the Detective for the last few days –”

“He’s been _what?_ ” Maze nearly shouted, sounding equal parts shocked and furious. Lucifer hushed her, glancing back at the crime scene. It was nearly cleared out, a couple of uniforms and his Detective the only ones left now that the victim had been removed and the crime scene techs had finished their analyses and photographs. Thankfully, the humans barely glanced over at Maze’s outburst, too busy listening to his Detective as she gave them whatever final instructions she had for them.

“He tried to take her from the precinct garage and then followed up by throwing her off the penthouse balcony the following evening,” Lucifer explained, feeling a fresh wave of adrenaline crest through his chest at the reminder of his Detective plummeting through the night, his own race against gravity and the knowledge that he would surely fail. “I have to believe that Michael will try again. For all I know, he’s watching from somewhere nearby at all times, tracking the Detective wherever she goes. I don’t know why he’s so focused on her –”

“I told you he wanted to ruin your life,” Maze said, shooting a glance over at the crime scene again, her dark eyes fixed on his Detective, her brows drawing down in concern. “Killing her would do that pretty effectively.”

Lucifer didn’t have anything to say, his own eyes drawn to his Detective like metal filings to a magnet. Yes, the loss of her would absolutely destroy his life. Not only his life on Earth, but any existence he could hope to have in any realm. One of his few comforts during his return to rulership in Hell had been the knowledge that his Detective remained on Earth, healthy and safe and alive. If that were to change…no. He wouldn’t think about that. Traveling too far down that path would leave him unable to function and he had to be at the top of his game right now.

“Wait a second. Archangels can’t kill humans,” Maze said, her voice sharp. “You said he threw her off your balcony; he shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“He was utilizing a loophole, much like Uriel did when he attempted to take the Detective’s life,” Lucifer said. “Putting into action situations that _could_ take her life, but which weren’t _guaranteed_ to do so.”

“Sounds like cheating to me,” Maze said, and Lucifer shrugged; he couldn’t argue with that.

“The point is, I need to know the Detective will have someone protecting her while I go back to Hell to get the information that I need if I’m to know for sure whether some of the demons are breaking my orders, and deal with the problem if they are.”

“And since Amenadiel has to watch over Linda and Charlie, I’m the closest thing you have to a supernaturally-powered nanny,” Maze finished. “Sure, I can do that.”

“Perfect,” Lucifer said. “Then I’ll go now; no need to waste time.”

Lucifer was gone before Maze could respond, moving at a fast walk away from the crime scene and into the shrouding darkness of the sunless day, bringing his wings into the material world with a thought and launching himself skyward in a single, powerful flap.

The trip to Hell took no time at all, the division between the two realms easy for an archangel to breach. Lucifer was through the Gates of Hell in only a moment, standing in the eternal twilight and raining ash of the realm in which he’d spent thousands of years, the soles of his Louboutins sinking into the thin layer of ashy precipitation which had collected upon the rocky ground. He moved through the seemingly endless corridors between the torture mausoleums and towering rocky columns, tugging at the cuffs of his suit jacket as he moved, much like a cat shrugging its fur back into place after it had been disturbed.

He didn’t see any demons as he walked, which was surprising given the sheer number of Lilith’s children that inhabited the realm. He supposed if he started opening the doors to rooms, he would find demons within doing their assigned tasks and torturing the human souls imprisoned behind those doors, but he wasn’t looking for individuals; he needed to find a huge gathering of demons. If he asked enough at one time, surely at least one of them would have heard rumors of possessions.

It took him several minutes to find the edge of the particular ‘neighborhood’ of torture rooms through which he’d been walking, stepping onto one of the vast and reaching rocky fields of Hell that were the main home of the demons. Lucifer had expected to find the rocks, ash, and demons that spread out before him once he finally stepped into the open. He had not expected to find Michael.

“Brother! Finally! That took a lot longer than I thought it would,” Michael said, standing just before Lucifer, his back to the crowd of demons beyond them. His legs were spread, arms crossed over his chest, and there was a mocking smile on his face, the scar running down the side of his nose and towards his ear causing the smile to twist a bit on that side.

“What are you doing here?” Lucifer asked, his voice lowering to a snarl.

“I’m visiting,” Michael said. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen Lilith’s kids; thought it was time to check in with them. I mean, they’re practically family, right? Father _did_ make Lilith, even if she’s not a celestial…”

“Get out,” Lucifer said. “Hell is not open for you.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Michael said, his smile growing even wider.

That was the last straw. Lucifer’s hands clenched and he reached deep within himself, into the well of fury that always seemed to be bubbling within him, and pulled forth his Devil face.

And pulled.

And pulled.

After a few seconds of straining, he blew out a harsh breath, flexing his hands and giving them a little shake.

“Having some trouble performing, brother?” Michael asked, his smile turning mocking. “I’ve heard that’s something that can happen with age.”

“What have you done?” Lucifer snarled, his frustration at his ineffectual demonic guise’s appearance turning instantly to fury at his brother. He took a single step closer to Michael, his rage boiling over and filling him. “How have you stopped me from calling my Devil face? You shouldn’t be able to; I am King here!”

“Hell has no King,” Michael said, his voice cold. “And it needs no warden. I told our brother as much.”

Lucifer’s eyes went huge, alarm spiking through him with such intensity that it completely drowned out his rage for a few seconds, leaving his fingertips tingling with shock. “… _you_ told…?”

“You don’t think Father actually took time away from His centuries of contemplation to speak to _Amenadiel_ , out of all of us? _I_ was His general when you tried to overthrow Heaven; if Father were going to speak to _anyone_ , it would’ve been _me_. Amenadiel’s conceit let him believe that I was Father speaking to him, and he left Hell unguarded so I could step in.”

“What did you do?” Lucifer whispered, his anger gone now, his fear quickly rising.

“The only reason you were the King of Hell is because you stepped into the role when Father threw you down from on high. This realm had no leader; you took the role that only a celestial could claim. But you left Hell for Earth. You even told the demons that came looking for you that you had no plans to return.”

“I came back,” Lucifer protested weakly.

“And left again,” Michael said. “You aren’t King here. Not anymore.”

Michael’s eyes flared into shimmering embers of orange light, and Lucifer tensed for the attack. He expected Michael to come towards him, knew that this was a fight he would not be able to win and could only hope to survive. In Hell, the King was all-powerful against all except God Himself, and Lucifer was no longer King.

He did not anticipate that the attack would come from behind him, though.

The demons came silently, slithering and creeping from the pathways through the mausoleums. The first attack caught him in the low back, the Hell-forged blade driving deep before he had a chance to jerk away. His shout of pain and shock echoed off the stones of Hell, causing the gathered crowd of demons beyond Michael to cheer in response. Lucifer spun, wings flying wide as he used them to buffet away the next few demons that lunged at him, blades clutched in their claws and tentacles. It appeared Michael had been raiding the armories that Lucifer had locked thousands upon thousands of years before. Of course, as the King, it was well within Michael’s purview to unlock all the deepest places that Lucifer had long since closed off.

Hell-forged blades sliced through his arms, caught him in his sides and cut across his chest. One drove deeply into the back of one thigh and Lucifer fell to his knee, screaming in agony.

“How the mighty have fallen,” Michael said, amusement in his voice. “Of course, this isn’t the first time you fell, is it, brother?”

Lucifer glared up at Michael through the haze of pain, sweeping one powerful wing out to push away the rush of demons coming at him. Another blade sliced across his low back where it was no longer protected by the thick fall of feathers.

He wasn’t going to be able to fight them all. He wasn’t going to win this fight. The only thing he could do was run.

Lucifer spread his wings wide, taking to the air even as the demons came at him again, blades and teeth flashing. One last blade cut across the front of his ankle as he rose above the demons below, teeth gritted in pain and determination as he cut through the ash-fall into the twilight sky above Hell. He moved between the worlds with a thought, the change from twilight-Hell to night-dark-Earth jarring. Blood was running in thick rivulets beneath his clothes, causing the fabric to stick to him in uncomfortable patches. That was bad, he knew; wounds inflicted by Hell-forged weapons would heal slowly, and he would lose a lot of blood in the meantime.

But Lux was just ahead, shining like a beacon in the darkness. In seconds, Lucifer was landing on the balcony. The leg that had been stabbed deeply gave beneath him as soon as he put weight on it and he half-fell into the penthouse, turning his fall into a roll. He fetched up against the couch and lay there, breathing hard. He needed to get up and tend his wounds. He needed to at least staunch the flow of blood. He needed…

His thoughts drifted away, and he passed out on the floor of his penthouse, blood slowly puddling around him on the cool polished stone of the floor.

* * *

Maze was staring at her. Maze had been staring at her for the last hour. Chloe was beginning to feel like an insect under a magnifying glass.

Maze was perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, her boots braced on the crossbar below, one elbow resting on a knee while she twirled a knife in her other hand. And, of course, staring at Chloe. Always staring, her dark eyes fixed and her red lips quirked in a tiny smirk.

Chloe was standing in the kitchen, her hands resting on the countertop, one fingernail tapping softly against the stone as she looked around the silent apartment for a minute before her eyes were drawn inexorably once more to Maze. Still staring.

“Okay, do you _have_ to do that?” Chloe burst out, standing up straight and dropping her hands to her sides.

“Do what?” Maze asked, unconcerned by Chloe’s obvious distress.

“Stare at me!”

“Lucifer told me to watch you. I’m watching you.” Maze still sounded completely unconcerned, but Chloe gave a little groan of annoyance.

“I get that. But you don’t have to – to _stare_ at me constantly, do you?”

“Probably not,” Maze agreed, her gaze unwavering.

“So maybe you could try doing something else for a minute or two? File a nail or…or maybe watch something on TV? I wouldn’t mind; you can even hog the remote.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Maze said, her smirk growing slightly.

Chloe stared back in silence, fingers tapping against the top of her thigh for a second as she considered what to do next.

“What if I go up to my room and shut the door?” Chloe asked.

“I’ll open in and come in. Lucifer wants me to be there in case Michael swoops in to try and kill you again; I can’t do that if you shut me out on the landing.” Maze tucked her knife into its sheath at her thigh, standing from the barstool as if she expected Chloe to make a run for it at any second.

“Maze! I seriously doubt Michael is going to burst into my apartment and grab me before you have a chance to react, even if I’m alone in my bedroom.” Chloe knew she was getting close to pleading with the demon for a little privacy, but she couldn’t help it; they’d been in her apartment for almost two hours and while initially it had been possible for Chloe to ignore Maze’s intense regard, it had quickly become annoying and then infuriating.

Maze and Chloe had become real friends working together after Lucifer first returned to Hell to take up his mantle as King. Things had started getting weird shortly before Lucifer returned, Maze trying to take their friendship and turn it into something more, and they’d been in sort of a strange, uncomfortable place since then. Maze wasn’t making it any better during this stint as guard dog.

“How long is it going to take for Lucifer to get back up here?” Chloe asked, coming around the kitchen counter and moving into the living room, grabbing a knitted throw blanket she’d left on the couch the last time she’d had a chance to have a movie-and-popcorn self-care night. She folded the blanket with quick motions before turning back to Maze, who seemed to be considering the question.

“Time moves differently in Hell,” Maze said.

“I know. Thousands of years passed for Lucifer and we only experienced it as two months,” Chloe said.

“Exactly. So, it shouldn’t take him more than a couple of hours, tops. Unless something goes really wrong.” Maze smiled, giving a slight shrug of her shoulders.

Chloe stared at Maze, her eyes huge, alarm rising up in her.

“Maze. We’ve been _here,_ at my apartment, for two hours. He’s been gone for at _least_ three or four.”

“Oh,” Maze said, her face going blank. “Oh, shit.”

* * *

Maze directed Chloe into Lucifer's personal underground parking garage beneath Lux as they approached the club, and Chloe shot the demon a confused look.

“Why not just use the valet like I usually do?” she asked, and Maze gave Chloe a disbelieving look.

“Because it’s 10:30am. There's no valet there.”

“Right, yeah, of course,” Chloe said, taking one hand off the wheel to rub her forehead. “I keep thinking it's nighttime because…well, the sun. Or, rather, the lack of the sun.”

“Right,” Maze said, still starting at Chloe with a faint lift of one eyebrow as if she couldn't believe how dense the woman was being. “The garage will be faster anyway; the elevator up to the penthouse goes down to the garage, too. If Lucifer's back from Hell, I can almost guarantee he's going to be home.”

“Okay, but what if he's not?” Chloe asked.

“He will be,” Maze insisted, but she didn't look as confident as she was trying to sound.

Chloe pulled into the garage and slid her police-issued vehicle into an open slot. She hadn’t even turned the engine off before Maze was throwing the passenger door open and rushing across the garage, jabbing an impatient finger at the elevator call button. Chloe joined her before the elevator arrived, shifting from foot to foot as Maze continued to press the button with increasing frequency and urgency.

The elevator arrived with a soft chime and Maze forced her way in as soon as the doors were open enough for her to squeeze herself between them, already jabbing at the control panel to close the doors and take the elevator up to the penthouse. Chloe leaped in before the doors could begin sliding shut again, leaning back against the mirrored walls, her palms resting on the wooden grab bars that ran at hip-height around the elevator, her fingertips tapping a staccato beat of impatience against them.

The ride up to the penthouse felt longer than it ever had before, and by the time the elevator chimed to announce they had arrived at their selected floor, Maze was almost jittering from foot to foot in her need to get out.

“Oh, no,” Maze breathed as she stepped out of the elevator, breaking into a run. Chloe followed, not seeing the issue until she was well into the penthouse. Then, it was like a magnet, drawing her eyes across the room and holding them.

Lucifer was collapsed beside the couch, his back against the side of the couch but only just barely; he appeared to have slid down from a lean higher up the couch, because there was a dark smear of blood above his head, disappearing behind him. There was a much larger, much more alarming pool of blood around him, and Chloe could see multiple wounds through rends in the fabric of his clothes.

“No no no no!” Chloe’s negations started soft and quickly grew to a shout as she rushed across the wide room, dropping painfully onto her knees beside Lucifer. Maze paced past him, her favorite curved blades in her hands as she stepped out onto the balcony and looked out over the dark city, up into the sky and down towards the ground far below. Chloe barely even noticed the demon scanning for potential dangers; she only had eyes for Lucifer.

He was pale. He was _unbelievably_ pale. The last time she’d seen someone this pale, they’d been a corpse that had bled to death. She could still see his chest moving with his breaths…but only barely. Chloe’s hands hovered over him, lowering almost to the point of touching him before raising up, over and over. She was desperate to touch him but afraid of causing more damage if she did.

But then, she could hardly cause _more_ damage. It looked like he’d taken the role of Caesar in a reimagining of the assassination of Julius Caesar, his torso and legs covered in slices and stabs that were sluggishly leaking blood. Was the bleeding so slow because he was clotting and healing? Or because he was running out of blood?

“Move, Decker,” Maze snapped, dropping down into a crouch beside Lucifer and reaching out to shake his shoulder none-too-gently. “Lucifer! Hey! Wake up!”

Chloe held her breath, but Lucifer didn’t respond. His eyelids didn’t even twitch.

“Lucifer!” Maze shouted, and Chloe shook her head in negation of what was happening, tears blurring her vision. Maze reached down and slapped Lucifer across the face, the sound of her palm hitting him making Chloe jump.

“Maze!” she shouted, reaching down to press one gentle hand over the spot Maze had just hit.

“I had to see if he responded to pain,” Maze snarled, her dark eyes narrowed in fury and fear. “He’s really bad. We need help.”

“I don’t think…” Chloe’s voice broke, and she sucked in a shaking breath, trying to force the words out. “Maze, I think he’s lost too much blood. I don’t think a hospital can –”

“Who said anything about a hospital?” Maze snapped, whipping her phone up and sliding her finger across the screen quickly, tapping on the screen a few times before raising it to her ear.

“Who are you –”

“Shh!” Maze hissed, raising her free hand palm-up to silence Chloe. Chloe’s mouth shut with an audible clack of her teeth and she took her eyes off of Maze, looking down at Lucifer’s perfect, unresponsive face. She stroked her hand gently across his cheek and down to his jaw, feeling the roughness of his stubble beneath her palm. The tears were overflowing her eyes now, and Chloe could feel a sob building up in her chest, ready to break free. She knew once she started crying in earnest, she wouldn’t be able to stop. It would be like a dam bursting.

The sound of Maze’s voice broke Chloe out of her contemplation of the pain that was waiting in the wings, ready to explode over her.

“Amenadiel, stop. I need you at Lucifer’s penthouse now. He’s been attacked. I think he’s pretty close to death.”

Chloe couldn’t stop the tiny whimper that squeezed out of her at that last word, but Maze wasn’t paying attention to Chloe; she was walking back out onto the balcony, lowering her phone from her ear as she looked up. Chloe heard the sound of rushing air and heavy, flapping wings a second later and then Amenadiel was there, standing beside Maze on the balcony, his face full of confusion and worry as he shrugged his wings into immateriality.

“Maze, what are you –” He broke off as he saw Lucifer just beyond the balcony doors, and he hurried forward, shock filling his face as he lowered himself to one knee, leaning over Lucifer. “How…how did this happen?”

“He went back to Hell,” Maze said, standing behind Amenadiel. “Those wounds look like they were caused by Hell-forged weapons.”

Amenadiel closed his eyes for a moment, his face twisting in grief as he reached down to touch Lucifer’s shoulder, his hand resting on one of the few unbloodied spots on the white button-up shirt.

“He’s still here,” Amenadiel said a second later, his eyes opening as he turned to look over his shoulder at Maze. “He’s holding on, but only just. He needs help if he’s going to make it.”

“That’s why I called you,” Maze said, her face dark.

“Wait, what are you talking about?” Chloe interrupted, leaning forward slightly. “Are you going to take him to the hospital or something?”

“No, Chloe. These kinds of wounds…they take more than a mortal hospital can ever hope to give. He needs celestial help.”

“Celestial. Like, heavenly? But…but he can’t go back to Heaven,” Chloe protested, her voice weak and shaking.

“No, he can’t,” Amenadiel agreed. “But I am part of Heaven.”

The sound of his wings springing into reality was overwhelmingly huge, and the light his darkling wings threw off confused Chloe’s eyes for a moment, making her blink rapidly. Amenadiel reached back over his shoulder, his wing dipping slightly. His face twisted in pain and then he jerked his arm downwards, grunting softly. A moment later, he brought his arm back in front of him, a handful of plucked feathers clutched in his fist. The feathers seemed to shimmer and Chloe’s breath caught in her throat.

“Can…can those…?”

“They can heal the wounds,” Amenadiel confirmed, leaning out to begin placing feathers over the worst of the wounds. “But it will take Lucifer time to fully recover.”

“But he _will_ recover?” Chloe pressed, her heart pounding with sudden hope.

“Yes,” Amenadiel said, laying another feather over a deep wound in Lucifer’s abdomen.

They were silent as Amenadiel worked, placing feathers over the worst of the wounds. When his handful of feathers was used up, he reached over his other shoulder and pulled another handful from the other wing, wincing at the pain of their removal but not complaining. He continued to press feathers to the wounds peppering Lucifer’s body, asking for Chloe to help roll Lucifer to one side when it became harder to get to the wounds on his back. Somehow, none of the feathers on the front of Lucifer’s body fell free when they moved him. They stuck, despite the fact that there was nothing holding them there. Even the blood on his clothes wasn’t tacky enough to hold the heavy, dark feathers in place when he was rolled forward.

Once the last feather was placed, Amenadiel had Chloe gently roll Lucifer back down. There was the briefest pause, and then all the feathers seemed to flare brightly and Chloe squeaked in alarm, turning her face away and shutting her eyes to protect them. The light lasted only a few seconds, and when she turned back, the feathers were gone. But so were the wounds that had looked so dire only minutes before.

“Oh, my God,” Chloe whispered, reaching down to move the torn, blood-soaked fabric aside so she could peer at the skin beneath it. It was unharmed; even the blood that had been smeared around the wound was gone. If it wasn’t for the puddle beneath him and the volume of it soaked into his clothes, it would’ve been possible to believe Lucifer hadn’t bled at all.

Amenadiel helped Maze move Lucifer up onto the leather couch, getting him settled more comfortably. Lucifer didn’t respond at all during the process, not even the flicker of an eyelid. Chloe sat on the couch beside him, running her fingers gently through his hair as she watched the slow rise and fall of his chest.

“All right, I need someone to explain to me what happened,” Amenadiel said, wincing slightly as he pulled his wings back into immateriality. “How did he end up nearly stabbed to death?”

“We found him like this,” Maze said, her face tight with anger. “He went down to Hell to talk to the demons and asked me to keep an eye on Chloe while he was gone. We came to check on him, see if he’d made it back yet, and found him like this.”

“But that makes no sense. Why would he be attacked in Hell? He’s the King!” Amenadiel protested.

“I might be able to explain that,” Chloe said, looking up from Lucifer’s peaceful face. “I think that demons are possessing deceased humans again.”

“Yes, Lucifer told me that,” Amenadiel said.

“If they’re doing that,” Chloe continued, “they’re disobeying Lucifer’s direct orders. It’s not that hard to imagine that they might decide to take the disobedience to the next level, maybe try to get rid of him entirely.”

“But…Hell has to be ruled by a celestial,” Amenadiel said.

“It’s true,” Maze said, walking over to the matching leather couch across from the one Chloe and Lucifer were on. Maze dropped onto it, draping her arms over the back. “No demon can rule Hell.”

“You told Lucifer that Hell didn’t need a warden anymore,” Chloe said.

“Yes, I heard Father’s voice when I was keeping watch. He told me ‘Hell no longer requires a warden.’ I came back to Earth immediately.”

“Okay, so if it doesn’t need a warden, maybe that means it doesn’t need a King, either,” Chloe said.

Amenadiel glanced at Maze, and they stared at one another for a moment, doubt on both of their faces.

“No way,” Maze said.

“Not likely,” Amenadiel said at the same moment.

“Right, well…whatever happened, the demons obviously felt like they could attack Lucifer and get away with it. This was definitely an attempt on his life, not just a…a protest of his leaving and coming back and leaving and coming back again,” Chloe said, her tone a little sharper than she’d intended it to be.

“Whatever else it might mean, it means that demons aren’t being controlled right now,” Amenadiel said, turning and moving towards the balcony. “That being the case, I need to get back to Linda and Charlie.”

“I’ll keep watch here,” Maze said. “If anyone not strictly human shows up, I’ll make sure they don’t walk out of here again.”

Amenadiel nodded to Maze and then Chloe before opening his wings and leaping off the balcony, vanishing quickly into the night-dark sky.

“What now?” Chloe asked. Maze rose from the couch, drawing her knives again as she walked over to shut the balcony doors.

“We wait,” Maze said, and Chloe leaned back against the couch, rubbing a hand over her face.

“Okay. I need to call the precinct and let them know I’m having a personal emergency. They’re going to be pissed; I know calls are back-to-back right now…but I _can’t_ leave him like this.” Chloe glanced down at Lucifer, still unresponsive, still breathing shallowly. She wasn’t going anywhere.


	6. Chapter 6

The next few hours passed slowly. Maze prowled the penthouse ceaselessly, reminding Chloe of a hunting jungle cat. Lucifer slept, although his breathing became deeper and more even as time passed. Chloe cleaned the blood off the floor, using several rolls of paper towels and most of a spray bottle of Lysol to do it. She managed to clean most of the stain off the leather of the couch, but knew it would probably take a professional to truly remove the blood from the leather. She didn’t even try to address the blood that was undoubtedly being ground into the couch beneath Lucifer’s still form.

Every so often, Chloe would walk to the wall of floor-to-ceiling glass and look up at the stars shining in the sky. It was mid-afternoon, and the sky looked midnight-dark. Every time she looked out, the fear in her chest tightened a little bit more.

Lucifer began to stir around sunset – rather, what time the sun _would_ have been setting if it had ever risen to begin with. Chloe saw a faint twitch out of the corner of her eye from where she’d been standing by the glass doors of the balcony and she spun, thinking she was imagining it. But then she saw it again, the slightest twitch of Lucifer’s head.

“Maze!” she shouted, and the demon raced into the room, her knives raised.

“What is it?” Maze asked, her teeth bared in a snarl as she scanned the room for an attacker.

“Lucifer’s moving,” Chloe breathed, dropping to her knees in front of the couch, reaching out a tentative hand to brush her fingertips along his cheekbone. He made a soft sound, almost a sigh, and his eyelids flickered.

Chloe could hear Maze stepping up behind her, but she only had eyes for Lucifer. His eyelids flickered again and his eyebrows drew down a little, the faintest frown tugging at his mouth. Slowly, his eyes opened. He blinked several times before his gaze focused on Chloe.

“Hey,” she whispered, her vision going blurry with sudden relieved tears. She blinked rapidly, encouraging the blurriness away. Two tears slid down her cheeks as she smiled at Lucifer. “Welcome back.”

“Detective,” he murmured, his brow furrowing. He raised a hand, wiping the tears away with the side of a finger. “You’re crying.”

“You scared me. Scared us,” Chloe said, leaning back a little to glance at Maze. “We came looking for you when we realized how long you’d been gone and you were…you were in bad shape.”

Lucifer looked confused for a moment and then alarm widened his eyes and he shoved into a sitting position, reaching down to press his hands to his abdomen. He looked startled to find no wounds waiting for him, and jerked the ruined material up to look at the smooth skin below.

“Amenadiel,” Maze clarified. “I called him as soon as I saw how bad it was.”

“Ah,” Lucifer said, smiling faintly up at his lieutenant. “Right. Thank you, Mazikeen; always looking out for me.”

“Lucifer, what happened to you?” Chloe asked, and Lucifer looked back to her. He opened his mouth and then shut it with a small huff of air, as if he wasn’t sure how to proceed. He glanced between her and Maze and then shook his head.

“I’ll explain in a moment,” he said. “Let me change; these clothes are scratching at my skin most unpleasantly. It turns out blood is both a terrible fashion accessory and a right misery to have against one’s skin.”

Chloe stood, moving out of his way so he could rise from the couch. He moved slowly and carefully, but by the time he came out of his bedroom a few minutes later in a fresh suit, he was moving with all his usual grace and confidence.

“Much better,” he said, casting a wide smile at Chloe and Maze. “Obviously, a shower would’ve been best, but as we’re in a bit of an emergency situation just now, I thought I’d save that for later.”

“An emergency?” Maze asked. “You mean, more than the sun going out and Michael trying to get to Chloe?”

“Yes. As bad as both of those are, there’s more.” Lucifer took a deep breath, holding it for a moment, and then confessed, “I’ve lost my Devil face.”

There was a beat of silence and then Chloe said, “Wait. That’s the emergency?”

“Part of it,” Lucifer said, sending a bleak look over at Chloe. He obviously didn’t see the concern on her face that he expected, because his expression changed to annoyance. “You don’t seem to be understanding, Detective. I’ve _lost_ my Devil face.”

“I mean, you’ve lost it before,” Chloe said. “Is this…is this different from before?”

“Very,” Lucifer said, turning to glance at Maze. “Michael was waiting for me in Hell.”

“No,” Maze whispered, alarm filling her expression.

“Wait, I’m missing something,” Chloe said, stepping a little closer to Lucifer. “I get that it’s bad that Michael was in Hell, but what does that have to do with your Devil face?”

“While I was running back and forth on Earth, trying to work things out with you and then trying to deal with the sun going out, Michael seems to have taken over my job as ruler of Hell,” Lucifer said, his voice dark. Chloe sucked in a sharp breath as realization crashed over her.

“But…but your Father…God said that Hell didn’t need a warden anymore!” Chloe protested.

“Are we sure that Amenadiel heard what he thinks he heard?” Lucifer asked. “With me out of pocket and no celestial standing guard in my stead, it would’ve been easy enough for Michael to step in and take my throne. After all, I’ve said many times here on Earth that I had no intention of returning to Hell to rule. Those kinds of statements have power, Detective, and it can reverberate between the realms. Michael took advantage of my words and my absence to take over.”

“That’s why the demons attacked you,” Maze said, a snarl of fury twisting her pretty face. “Michael ordered them to.”

“Exactly right,” Lucifer said, running one palm absently down his abdomen as if soothing the wounds that were no longer there. “And I can only imagine he’s been sending demons to possess humans, although I can’t guess at his endgame.”

The sudden explosion of glass from the balcony doors took them all off guard. Chloe was only just beginning to flinch when arms went around her, cradling her against Lucifer’s chest as he put his body between her and the flying glass. He had moved impossibly fast, crossing the space between them in a blink. Chloe was still flinching at the sharp crackling sound of the glass exploding inward when she felt the warmth of Lucifer’s arms wrapping tightly around her.

The sound of glass falling died away as the last shards crashed against the polished stone floor, and then Michael’s amused voice drifted from the balcony.

“You should just stop guessing now, brother, because you’re never going to figure this out,” Michael said, his shoes crunching over the glass as he stepped into the penthouse.

Lucifer’s mouth twisted in a furious snarl. Carefully, he unwrapped his arms from Chloe, turning to face his brother, still standing between Chloe and danger.

“Gotta admit,” Michael said, sauntering forward another couple of steps, accompanied by the crunch of the balcony doors’ glass beneath his shoes, “I was hoping you’d be a lot more _dead_ than this when I dropped by. I’m guessing I have Amenadiel to thank for your continued existence. I’ll have to pay him a visit soon.”

“You won’t get a chance to do that,” Lucifer said, his voice a dark snarl, hands clenching into fists at his sides.

“I think you’re wrong about that. But you are right about _something_ ,” Michael said, a smile ticking up one corner of his mouth. “You _aren’t_ the King anymore. You are dethroned, Lucifer. Really, Hell is the better for it.”

Maze snarled, pulling her knives out and rushing towards Michael. Lucifer took only a moment to glance over his shoulder at Chloe, his expression hard.

“Stay back,” he said, and then he joined Maze.

Chloe took his advice. Only a few seconds of watching the fight proved to her that she was completely outclassed here. Her eyes could barely follow the speed of the attacks that Maze and Lucifer were throwing at Michael, and the archangel was defending himself against two attackers with hardly any trouble. True, Maze and Lucifer _were_ getting hits in on Michael, but nowhere near as many as they were _trying_ to get. And Michael was actually delivering blows of his own with alarming regularity. Each time the fighters broke apart long enough for Chloe to get a good look, Maze and Lucifer had new trickles of blood running from broken skin on their faces, hands, arms…

Chloe reached down to her belt, her hand brushing over her service weapon for a second before she dropped her hand away from it. It would be useless here; it wouldn’t even slow Michael down. And if she made a particularly unlucky shot and managed to shoot Maze, would the demon be injured? The demons that had possessed humans several months before had been vulnerable to head wounds, but they were demons inside human bodies, not demons on Earth in their own form.

No, she decided. The gun would be a bad choice. But that left her standing across the living room, useless and helpless, while Lucifer and Maze tried to take Michael down.

But even as she thought it, Michael got a kick in to Lucifer’s stomach that sent him stumbling through the open hole in the glass that led to the balcony. His shoes slipped in the glass, making his backwards stumble into a skid, and he hit the glass balcony railing hard. There was an almost musical crackling sound, and then the glass gave way and Lucifer fell off the balcony, tumbling out of sight.

“Lucifer!” Chloe screamed, taking a step forward before she stopped herself. She couldn’t get any closer to Michael than she was, and she couldn’t help Lucifer. Besides, he was an angel; he would just fly back up, right?

Maze roared her fury and redoubled her attacks on Michael, but with no second attacker to distract him, Michael was able to focus fully on Maze and it quickly became apparent that the demon was outclassed. In only seconds, Michael caught one of her arms as she stabbed towards him. He brought his opposite elbow down onto the middle of her forearm as he held it locked beneath his arm, and Chloe heard the sharp crack of the bone breaking. Maze screamed in pain and fury, dropping to her knees as the Hell-forged blade she’d been holding fell from her suddenly useless fingers to skitter under the couch.

Maze’s face twisted in renewed fury and she threw herself at Michael again. He dodged several stabs and swipes and then knocked her second knife free, sending it flying past Chloe to land somewhere behind the bar.

Maze glanced towards the bar, obviously weighing whether or not she could get to the blade before Michael could catch her and seemed to decide time wasn’t on her side. She threw a kick towards his torso, but Michael was ready for her. He caught her leg in his arms, baring his teeth in a snarling smile before he drove his knee down onto hers, creating another horrific cracking noise as her leg gave under the attack.

With Maze trying to fight with one arm and one leg temporarily out of commission, Michael was able to flip Maze’s back to him, locking an arm around her neck in a chokehold. Maze beat at his arm desperately with her one good arm, but without her weapons, the move was worse than useless against the archangel.

“Michael!” Chloe shouted, fury and fear rising up in her in equal measure. “Let her go, damnit!”

“No no no, Chloe,” Michael scolded, his voice rough as he sucked in harsh breaths after the physical exertion of the fight. “You have to wait your turn.”

Maze’s thrashing was getting weaker and weaker, and her dark eyes lifted for a second, meeting Chloe’s gaze. The look of frustration and fear in Maze’s eyes made Chloe’s breath catch in her throat.

Maze went limp, her eyes falling shut. Michael continued to hold her in the chokehold for a few more seconds, panting and smiling as he looked down at her. Finally, he dropped her to the glass-covered floor like she was a piece of trash, and turned his attention to Chloe.

“Alone at last,” he said, stepping over Maze’s unconscious form. Chloe took a step back, her back pressing into the solid wood of Lucifer’s piano.

The sound of wings alerted Michael a second before Lucifer flew back in through the balcony opening, giving the archangel just enough time to turn slightly before Lucifer plowed into Michael’s back like an arrow. The two angels tumbled across the polished stone floor, and Chloe leaped to the side just in time to avoid being bowled over by them. The piano was not as lucky; the force with which they hit the leg of the piano caused it to crash down on top of them.

Lucifer was on top when the piano fell, and the blow obviously stunned him. Michael seemed to realize Lucifer wasn’t tracking, and he reached inside his tweed jacket to an inner pocket, drawing something out. Chloe only had a second to recognize that the small, thin object Michael held was a syringe before Michael was uncapping it with his teeth and driving the needle into Lucifer’s neck.

Lucifer made a harsh noise, fighting to push himself off of Michael. He managed to get up to his knees before he wobbled, eyes blinking slowly. He raised one hand to press to his brow, body weaving as if he were fighting a strong wind. He raised his head, eyes meeting Chloe’s for just a second, before he toppled down onto the floor.

Michael slowly climbed to his feet, brushing himself off with a few quick movements.

“Now that _that’s_ done,” he said, raising his head to stare at Chloe with an icy smile.

“Don’t,” Chloe said, her hand dropping back to her service weapon again, despite knowing it would do her no good at all. “Stop right there, Michael.”

“No, that’s not happening,” Michael said, and he leaped towards her in a move too quick for her to react to, one arm wrapping tightly around her as the other covered her mouth and nose. She had only a second to realize what was happening, making a muffled noise of frantic protest, unable to draw breath to make another sound as she thrashed against Michael’s hold. Her lungs began to ache after only a few seconds, the desperate need for air pounding in her head like a whooping alarm. But she couldn’t draw a breath, not with Michael’s hand covering her nose and mouth so tightly and completely.

Chloe dug her short nails into Michael’s wrist, driving down as hard as she could. She might as well have been trying to dig her nails into polished wood for all the good it did. And then her hands were sliding down as everything faded away, leaving her in blackness.

* * *

Lucifer came to slowly, things drifting back to him in little fits and starts. He heard the squeal of tires on pavement and tried to open his eyes. It wasn’t until he heard the explosion of distant gunfire that he was able to snap his eyes open, forcing himself to a sitting position despite the lingering wooziness of whatever Michael had injected into him.

He was on an unfamiliar street, low-rent apartments and tumbling-down buildings lining both sides of the street, trash in the gutters, and the sidewalks cracked and broken with dying weeds pushing up through the cracks.

“Lovely,” Lucifer murmured, reaching up to rub a hand over his face, trying to push away the lingering effects of whatever Michael had injected into him. “What piece of Hell has Michael dropped me into now?”

That was when Lucifer realized that if he were here, stuck on some unfamiliar street in what might not even be LA, that meant his Detective was alone with Michael.

“Detective!” Lucifer gasped, using the wall beside him to pull himself unsteadily to his feet.

“Here.” The word was weak and croaking, but he recognized his Detective’s voice despite that. He spun and saw her a few feet further down the block, pushing out of a pile of full black trash bags, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “God, could he have put me anywhere more disgusting?”

Relief swept through Lucifer and he hurried to her, reaching down to help her to her feet, prompting a new wave of dizziness to sweep through him. He pressed a hand to the wall beside them, despite the trash bags at his feet, bracing and waiting for the dizziness to fade. His Detective wasn’t much better, her back braced against the wall and her legs spread wide as if she were having trouble getting her balance back.

“Did Michael inject you, too?” Lucifer asked.

“No,” his Detective said, reaching up to rub at her throat. “He choked me out. Still feeling pretty bad, though.”

“Mmm, me, too,” Lucifer admitted. “I don’t think I’m up to flying us anywhere yet. I’m afraid we’d smash into a window like a wayward pigeon if I took us into the air just now.”

“Let’s avoid that,” his Detective said, her voice still weak and rough. He was going to _kill_ Michael the next time he saw his brother. “We can just walk. Maybe we’ll feel better once we get moving, and it might help us figure out where we are.”

“Nowhere good,” Lucifer said. “I heard gunfire a few moments ago.”

His Detective reached down to touch her service weapon, still holstered at her hip, and cast a quick glance around the deserted, decrepit street. “All the more reason to get moving. Come on.”

They didn’t move with any speed, stumbling and losing their footing as often as they took good steps. They’d barely moved a dozen feet down the street before the sound of a roaring car engine followed by distant gunfire made them both tense and spin, looking for the source of the sound. At the end of the block, a car squealed around the corner, fleeing. A person stumbled back before thumping into the apartment building behind them and slumping to the ground.

“Oh, my God,” his Detective whispered, turning and stumbling back the way they’d come, trying to go towards the distant drive-by-shooting victim. She was stumbling and weaving, tripping over the black trash bags she’d pulled herself out of only minutes before, and Lucifer hurried to catch up, managing to move a little better than she was.

“Detective, wait. Let me help you,” he said, putting an arm around her. She cast a grateful glance up at him, and he saw the shine of sweat on her brow and upper lip.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice still croaky and weak. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel almost…almost like I have a fever…”

Alarm spiked and Lucifer reached over with his free hand, pressing his palm to her sweat-damp forehead. Her skin was hot to the touch, and she had hectic spots of color high on both cheeks.

“He must’ve done something more than just choking you out,” Lucifer said, his jaw tightening. “Perhaps injected you with something after you were unconscious…I think you need hospital, Detective.”

“Not yet,” she said, shaking her head weakly, her eyes unnaturally bright with the fever spiking in her. “We have to go help the…the…he’s _gone_.”

It took Lucifer a few seconds to understand what she was talking about, and then he followed her shocked, confused gaze to the apartments at the end of the block and felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. The person who’d been slumped against the apartment wall just minutes before was gone. In fact, _everything_ was gone: the blood on the wall, the bullet holes in the glass door of the apartment building…all of it. The street looked utterly normal once again.

“No,” he whispered, realization sweeping through him as his Detective took a wheezing breath beside him, leaning more heavily against him as if her strength were leaving her. “No…oh, no no no.”

“Lucifer, what?” his Detective asked, her voice shaking a little.

“He’s put us in Hell,” Lucifer said, his pulse beginning to speed as he looked down at his Detective, at the paleness of her skin except for the two bright spots on her cheeks, at the sweat beading on her forehead and upper lip, at the tremble of her jaw as she tried to hold herself together. “He’s put us in a Hell loop.”

“In _Hell?_ ” his Detective repeated, frowning and scanning their surroundings, doubt evident in her expression. “You mean… _this_ is Hell?”

“This is _someone’s_ Hell, yes,” Lucifer confirmed, glancing around the street. “It’s a Hell loop, probably that poor fool who got gunned down at the apartments down there. They’re repeating the events of their death over and over, being shot and dying on a street. And Michael’s dumped us into it.”

His Detective nodded slowly, glancing around. “So, how do we get out?”

“A door,” Lucifer said. “One of the doors on this street will take us out of this particular torture room and to Hell proper, and I can get us back to Earth.”

His Detective stared at him for a second in disbelief, her eyebrows rising as she turned to look at the apartments and stores, the multiple doors lining _both_ sides of the street, before she turned to look back at him. “This is going to take forever.”

“That’s just it, Detective: we don’t _have_ forever,” Lucifer said, his voice constricted. The arm he had around her shoulders tightened a little, pulling her against his side more fully as he confessed, “Humans aren’t meant to be in Hell. Not living humans, anyway. You _can’t_ be here.”

“Well, I am,” she said, reaching up to swipe one arm across her forehead, the movement uncoordinated and weak.

“Detective,” he said, unable to keep the tremor from his voice. “You _can’t_ be. This plain won’t support human life. It’s…it’s killing you.”

“What?” she whispered, her eyes going wide as her face paled even more.

“The fever, your weakness…your body is failing. If we don’t get you out of here soon, you will die.”

His Detective shrugged away from him, escaping from his supporting arm, her eyes sweeping the street again, frantic and frightened as she looked at all the doors. She swayed on her feet unsteadily, and then looked back at him, her lips pressing into a hard line. “Then we’d better hurry. We’ll check all the doors on this side of the street from here to the end of the block, and then cross to the other side and check the other side. If we haven’t found it by then, we’ll start back up this street from the other end of the block.”

She didn’t wait to see if Lucifer agreed to her plan; she just stumbled forward to the first door, jerking it open and stepping through it…only to pop back out of it almost instantly, back on the exact same street in the exact spot she’d tried to exit. She blinked in confusion for a second, glancing up and down the street, then turning to look back at the door she’d opened.

“That would indicate it is _not_ the exit,” Lucifer said, his tone dry.

“Right. Got it,” his Detective said, her words clipped. “Let’s keep going. I’ll do the next one and you go past to the one after it. We’ll leap frog each other.”

The roar of a car engine punctuated her words and they both turned, watching as the gunfire exploded from the car racing around the block, bullets smashing into the person at the end of the street and the door of the apartment building before the car squealed around the next corner on two tires. His Detective tensed as if she wanted to run and help the victim, but she shook her head slightly; whoever they were, they were long past the point of helping.

“Let’s go,” she whispered, turning away from the victim and setting her jaw.

The next few minutes passed slowly, opening doors and passing through only to pop back into the Hell loop. Lucifer noticed his Detective was moving slower and slower, taking longer to get to each door, stumbling and weaving more noticeably with each door they checked. When he heard the sound of her falling to the concrete sidewalk a moment later, it wasn’t even a surprise, although his heart still sunk as he turned and saw her sitting with her legs folded beneath her, one hand braced on the pavement as the other pressed to her face. He ran to her, crouching down beside her and resting a hand on her shoulder. Her breaths were soft wheezes, the sound of someone struggling to pull in each respiration.

“Detective?”

“I can’t,” she whispered, unable to lift her head. “I can’t…I can’t walk anymore. I can’t breathe…”

Lucifer didn’t even hesitate. He looped his arms beneath her, scooping her up. She didn’t protest, hanging weakly, her cheek pressed to his chest as she closed her eyes, still breathing as if she were trying to suck air through wet cloth.

It was harder to check the doors now. His Detective was a dead weight in his arms, and he had to struggle to grasp the knobs and handles of the doors without dropping her.

Each time he struggled through the newly opened door, her felt a brief burst of hope, immediately extinguished as he stepped back onto the street again. It was harder to ignore the drive-by shooting as they moved closer and closer to it, the explosion of sound each time it happened making his shoulders tense and the muscles of his body tighten until he felt like one solid knot of muscles from the crown of his head to the balls of his feet.

His Detective was breathing slower now, each wheezing inhale seeming to take an age after her exhales. He was running out of time, and while he was an archangel with all the strength of a celestial being, even he could tire; carrying a grown human woman down a street and through multiple doors had his arms shaking.

But he wasn’t giving up. He wouldn’t. He _couldn’t_. He had to find the exit, or…there was no ‘or.’ He _had_ to find the exit.

He’d gotten so used to being dumped back onto the street, it was startling when he stepped through a door and stumbled into the twilight dimness of Hell. The door behind him shut automatically with a soft thump, and Lucifer realized that the demons would be on them in a second. They had to know he and his Detective were here, and Michael had undoubtedly stationed some to watch the Hell loop in case they made it out.

Lucifer pulled his wings out of immateriality and took off before the sound of the door shutting had finished echoing off the walls of the surrounding torture mausoleums, taking flight into the ash-filled sky, his wings beating hard as he struggled to keep hold of his Detective, his arms shaking with the strain.

The passage between realms was harder than he was used to, undoubtedly because he was trying to leave Hell with a human. Since she was still alive, though _– please, let her still be alive_ – he was able to break through onto the Earthly plain a moment later, appearing in the dark LA sky. He folded his wings and dived towards the nearest well-lit rooftop, the skyscraper rising to meet them at speed. He unfolded his wings at the last possible moment, checking their dive and dropping them gently onto the rooftop. He stumbled when they hit, falling painfully to his knees, the gravel scattered across the rooftop digging into his flesh. He kept his arms tight around his Detective though, leaning back over his heels to prevent falling onto her on the loose gravel of the roof. As soon as he felt stable enough to not tumble onto her, he loosened his grip, looking down to assess her. The lights spread at intervals along the edges of the rooftop gave him ample illumination to see her beautiful, familiar face, the soft tumble of her light hair across the dark sleeve of his suit jacket, and to see that she was not waking up.

“Detective? Can you hear me? Detective?”

She didn’t respond, her eyes still shut, her breaths shallow…but no longer wheezing. Surely that meant she was getting better. It _had_ to mean she was getting better.

Lucifer stared down at her face, her generous mouth slack and her long lashes not even fluttering.

“Detective? Detective!”

Even his shout didn’t cause her to react. She remained limp and still except for the slight rise and fall of her chest. What if…what if they’d been in Hell too long? How long could a living human be in that realm without suffering irreparable damage? His eyes prickled as tears gathered in them, his voice shaking as he whispered, “Detective, please…wake up. Please…”

Her breathing did not speed and her eyelids did not flicker. She was completely unresponsive. She…she wasn’t _there._

Lucifer’s eyes shut, misery swelling in him like a burning wave, overwhelming him and squeezing the breath from his lungs as his shoulders hunched protectively inward, shaking. His wings, still fanning out from his back, lowered to drape across the rooftop on either side of them, the long pinions trailing in the gravel.

‘ _Dad_ ,’ he prayed, sending the thought out with as much focused concentration as he could manage at the moment, ‘ _you have to let her stay. You_ owe _me_.’

Lucifer stayed on his knees, his Detective cradled to his chest, his eyes shut. The intermittent sounds of distant car horns and sirens broke the silence of the dark night periodically, but he didn’t raise his head or open his eyes. He was waiting.

If Michael had killed her…if this was the end, then Lucifer would find his brother and he would happily commit murder. It would be hard, considering Michael now had all the power of the Lord of Hell, but Lucifer would find a way to make it happen. Perhaps he could borrow Maze’s knives, make a proper job of it. He would figure something out; if Chloe were gone, he’d have eternity to figure out a way to make Michael pay for –

A soft groan drifted up from his Detective and he felt her body tense in his arms. His eyes popped open and he stared down at her, eyes scanning over her face again and again, looking for the slightest twitch. Her eyelids fluttered and his breath exploded out of him in something between a laugh and a sob. He couldn’t tell which it was, and didn’t really care at the moment.

“Detective,” he said, his voice shaking. He shifted his hold on her, bringing one hand up to brush against her cheek, pushing away a small lock of hair. Her eyes slowly opened, blinking a few times in the brightness of the rooftop lighting.

“Lucifer? Where…?”

“LA,” he reassured her quickly. “Earth. I found the door. We’re back.”

A smile touched her mouth and she reached one arm up, sliding it gently around his neck, her hand cupping the back of his head lightly. Her fingertips stroked against his hair. “You did it. You saved us.”

The gentle pressure on the back of his head was all the encouragement Lucifer needed. He leaned down, his lips touching his Detective’s with such trembling sweetness. The kiss went on for longer than either of them had expected, but not nearly as long as they would have liked. When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing hard, although Lucifer was pleased to hear no remnants of a wheeze in his Detective’s breaths.

“We need to move on from here,” Lucifer said.

“What we really need is to stop reacting to Michael,” his Detective said, wriggling free of his embrace to get her legs underneath her. She stood with no wobbling and Lucifer rose to his own feet, standing beside her on the bright rooftop as she moved to look out over the lights of the city. “We keep reacting to the things he does to us; we need to _act_ , not _re_ act.”

“Of course,” Lucifer agreed. “But we have no way to predict what he’ll do next.”

“Yeah, that’s the main problem,” his Detective admitted, shaking her head. “He’s the Lord of Hell now, right? Maybe we need to try picking a demon’s brain?”

“Maze might have suggestions –” Lucifer began, but he stopped sharply as he realized that Maze hadn’t been in Hell with them. “Maze. She wasn’t with us.”

His Detective tensed beside him, meeting his alarmed gaze with wide eyes. “We have to get back to Lux.”

Lucifer gave his arms a shake, trying to get rid of the lingering exhaustion in them, and then moved to scoop his Detective up again.

“Oh, hey, whoa,” she said, backing up. “Are you going to fly us there?”

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked. “Your car isn’t here. Unless you’re hoping to call an Uber or walk, neither of which will be as fast as flying –”

“Right, sorry.” She shook her head, eyes flicking to his wings and then out over the city nervously. “I’ve just…I’ve never…”

“Of course, you have,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Just now.”

“I was unconscious,” she protested.

“And when I saved you from your fall off the balcony,” he said.

“Okay, but I was panicking from almost dying,” she pointed out.

“Detective,” Lucifer scolded lightly, a faint smile tipping up the corners of his mouth. “Are you afraid I’ll drop you?”

“I…no. I mean…of course not, no.”

“Well, then,” Lucifer said, holding his arms wide. “Time is of the essence.”

His Detective blew out a breath, giving herself a little shake like someone about to jump into icy water, and then stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. Lucifer’s arms went around her ribs, tightening. “Trust me, Detective.”

“You know I do,” she whispered, tipping her head up to meet his eyes.

“I know,” he said, his voice softening as a smile warmed his expression. And he leaped into the night sky, heading back to Lux.


	7. Chapter 7

Lucifer set Chloe down as soon as they landed on the balcony, untwining his arms from around her body, although he kept hold of one of her arms.

“Careful,” he said. “There’s glass everywhere.”

“Right,” Chloe said, taking mincing steps across the glass, feeling it slip and shift beneath the soles of her shoes as she made her way through the uneven hole of what had been the balcony doors before Michael shattered them. They stepped past the crunching landmines and Chloe looked around the penthouse, scanning for Maze.

“Mazikeen?” Lucifer called, stepping around one of the couches and moving further into the penthouse.

“Here.” The voice, croaking and soft, came from across the penthouse, near the bar.

Chloe spotted Maze a second later, dragging herself by her forearms across the floor towards the elevator, moving slowly with her previously broken leg trailing as if she hadn’t fully recovered from the fight. Lucifer hurried to Maze’s side, crouching beside her and offering an arm to help her up. She leaned heavily on him, hopping on her good leg until they got to the bar and Lucifer was able to help her up onto a barstool. Chloe moved to push another stool closer for Maze to prop her still-healing leg up.

“Glad you guys got back here when you did,” Maze said hoarsely, leaning one arm onto the bar and sighing. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to reach the button to call the elevator so I could go down and hunt for you.”

“ _Hunt_ for us?” Lucifer asked, his tone disbelieving as he stared at his right-hand demon in amazement. “How were you planning to move around the city when you can’t even stand up without help?”

“I hadn’t gotten around the figuring that out yet,” Maze nearly snarled, sending an angry glance towards him. “I just said I was still working on how to get to the elevator buttons.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have mattered,” Lucifer said, moving around the bar to stand behind it, grabbing a couple of tumblers and a bottle of alcohol to pour drinks for himself and Maze. He ducked down again once the drinks were poured, coming up with one of Maze’s Hell-forged blades in his hand. He set it on the bar top next to Maze.

“Why wouldn’t it have mattered?” Maze growled, reaching out to snatch the blade and tuck it away in one of the holsters at her thigh.

“Well…we were in Hell,” Lucifer admitted.

“You were in _Hell_?” Maze shouted, turning to give Chloe a disbelieving look.

“Michael dumped us there,” Lucifer admitted before lifting the bottle of alcohol towards Chloe. “Detective?”

“No,” Chloe murmured with a little shake of her head before turning her attention to Maze. “We were in Hell, yes. We woke up on what looked like a city street, but we realized things were repeating and Lucifer realized where we were.”

“But…but you’re _alive_!” Maze said, still staring at Chloe in disbelief. Chloe shrugged in rising discomfort.

“Almost wasn’t,” she admitted, and Maze looked back to Lucifer.

“I managed to get her out. As soon as she was…once she was speaking again, we decided to come here to look for you.”

“Well, hail hail, the gang’s all here,” Maze muttered before grabbing the drink Lucifer had poured her and tossing the entire thing down in one swallow. Lucifer refilled her glass without being asked, and Maze sighed, leaning over the bar again. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“How much longer will you need for your leg to mend?” Lucifer asked.

“Another hour?” Maze said, shrugging slightly.

“An _hour_?” Chloe sputtered, unable to believe what she’d just heard. “But I _heard_ Michael break your leg, Maze. Not dislocate a joint, not sprain something… _break the bone._ That’s _months_ of healing and physical therapy and…”

Chloe trailed off at the expression on Maze’s face: disbelief and vague annoyance.

“…you…are a demon. Right.” Chloe held her hands up, palms out. “Okay, an hour. That’s…that’s good. We can plan while you heal.”

“Plan _what_?” Maze asked, her voice low and frustrated. “Our next big ass-kicking? Because so far, I haven’t heard of anyone managing to slow Michael’s roll since this whole sun thing started.”

“Our problem is that we keep reacting to the things he does,” Chloe said, crossing her arms and leaning a hip against the bar. “We need to act, not _re_ act.”

“I’m not following, Detective,” Lucifer said, lifting his own tumbler to down the contents.

“Michael put out the sun. He tried to take me in the parking garage. He threw me off the balcony. He sent the demons in Hell after you. Those are all things Michael is doing, things we’re reacting to. We need to figure out a way to bring Michael to us so that _we_ can be ready.”

“Right,” Lucifer said slowly, a smile slowly brightening his expression. “You’re right, Detective. We need to figure out a way to bring him to us so that we can attack him on _our_ terms.”

“Great, but how can we do that?” Maze asked. “No one’s been able to figure out where he’s hiding out in the city, and heading down to Hell to face him on his own turf is out of the question.”

“Of course,” Lucifer said. “And the Detective wouldn’t be able to come with us if we did. No way am I leaving her unprotected up here.”

“No, we don’t need to go to Hell,” Chloe said quickly. “Think about it: all the places he’s attacked us have been placed he knows we’ll be, places we go to frequently: the penthouse, the precinct garage, Hell…the main problem is that the precinct is way too public and the penthouse has already proven to be almost indefensible. He’s gotten to us too many times up here.”

“So, what do you suggest?” Lucifer asked, eyebrows drawing down in confusion.

“My apartment,” Chloe said, a grim smiling crossing her face.

“Good thinking, Decker!” Maze said with a feral grin. “It’s private, it’s pretty defensible…”

“And Michael is familiar with it,” Lucifer finished.

“Plus, if we can get Amenadiel to wait with us, we’ll have two angels and a demon against Michael. I mean, surely with that many against him, he can’t win another fight.”

Lucifer was silent for a moment, staring down at the bar top as he thought through Chloe’s suggestions, looking for weaknesses. Finally, though, he smiled brightly and looked back up at Chloe, his face lighting up as he met her hopeful expression.

“It could work,” he said, coming out from behind the bar. “And perhaps once we’ve managed to corner that slimy toad, we can convince him to bring the sun back.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Chloe said.

“Through any means necessary,” Lucifer added.

“That’s what _I’m_ counting on,” Maze said, showing her teeth in something closer to a snarl than a smile. Chloe frowned, shaking her head a little, but she didn’t say anything. What could she say? The entire human race was at risk if the sun didn’t come back out soon, and Michael had done nothing to endear himself to her since she’d known him. She didn’t approve of torture under most circumstances, but if it was the only way to get the sun back…

“I don’t like it,” Chloe said, her voice soft, “but I understand why it might be necessary.”

“Michael’s always been a coward,” Lucifer said, his tone dripping with loathing. “Maze will probably barely be able to start on him before he’s giving us whatever we ask.”

“I hope not,” Maze said, her voice dark. “I owe him some pain.”

“Speaking of, how’s the leg?” Lucifer asked, shooting a curious glance down at Maze’s still-propped leg. She took it off the bar stool slowly, putting it on the floor and rising to stand, slowly moving her weight from her good leg to both legs.

“Hurts a little, but I think it’ll hold,” Maze said, nodding. “Let me get my other blade and we can go.”

Maze clumped slowly across the penthouse, going down to her belly in the glass by the couches to fish her blade out from where Michael had knocked it during their fight earlier. She stood up, brushing glass off her clothes negligently as she made her way back to Lucifer and Chloe, her steps still slow and heavy as her leg continued to mend.

“Should we call Amenadiel now?” Chloe asked, moving over to press the elevator call button.

“No, we can call him on the way,” Lucifer said. “No sense wasting any more time than we already have. We’ll take my car.”

Chloe grimaced, but didn’t object; the truth was that his sports car would be faster than her police-issued vehicle, and speed was of the essence now. Throughout their conversation at Lucifer’s private bar, she’d heard the distant sounds of sirens from the city beyond the broken balcony doors. Things in LA were getting worse the longer the sun stayed dark, and she couldn’t imagine that they were any better anywhere else in the world. If they wanted to set things to rights before the planet was damaged beyond repair, they didn’t have the luxury of taking their time.

The ride down in the elevator was silent. Maze leaned against the grab bars, trying to take the weight off her bad leg. Lucifer had changed out of his blood-soaked suit hours before, but there were still spots and streaks of blood on the skin at his neck and on the back of one hand. Chloe herself felt rumpled, exhausted, and shaky after too many hours of frantic activity and not enough food or rest. She would’ve liked to call a time-out, eat a meal, and take a nap….but they couldn’t.

When the elevator doors opened on Lux, Chloe blinked in surprise. While she felt almost too tired to stand, that obviously wasn’t the case for everyone. Lux was packed to capacity with people, the dancefloor undulating and the bar two-deep as people waited to call out their orders to the harried bartender.

“What on Earth…?” Chloe whispered, the strobing colored lights of Lux playing over the twisting, shifting crowd.

“Humans,” Lucifer said, a fond note in his voice. “Not even the end of the world can stop them from enjoying their vices.” He stepped past her, out of the elevator and into the dimness of the club, laughing softly to himself.

“Part of why I like it here so much,” Maze said, moving past Chloe, too. Chloe sighed, shaking her head, and joined them in the flashing lights and heavy crush of bodies.

They were threading their way through the crowd with difficulty, Maze snarling each time someone bumped into her. Chloe couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen so many people inside the piano bar and club. Maybe they were trying to distract themselves from the nightmare happening outside.

Chloe was muttering, “Excuse me” for the hundredth time as she tried to squeeze through a gap not quite big enough for her to squeeze through when a voice cut through the din.

“Stop!”

The single word hit her with an almost physical blow, and the music suddenly cut off, the silence falling on the room with a weight Chloe could feel pressing against her skin as heavily as the bodies of the dancers who had suddenly gone still all around her. Chloe’s pulse picked up and she finished squeezing through the small gap, joining Lucifer and Maze. They were both looking up towards the balcony overhead, and Chloe turned to follow their gazes.

Michael stood straight and tall on the balcony above them, both hands resting on the balcony rails, smiling down at them with a gloating expression.

“We need to get these people out of here. Now,” Chloe whispered to Lucifer, reaching for her badge at her waist as she glanced quickly at the people crowding the club. They were all potential victims if this turned into another battle royale between the angels and the demon.

“No, Detective,” Lucifer replied, not bothering to whisper. His voice carried over the silence in the club, and Chloe realized that it was _unusually_ silent. For the number of people inside the huge room, there should have been whispering or the sound of shuffling feet or even the odd cough. Instead, not a single person was making a sound. She glanced around, but the faces around them were strangely blank. “I think we’ve found the missing victims from all the recent murders around the city.”

Chloe’s stomach dropped, her hand sliding weakly from her badge as the realization of what Lucifer was saying washed over her. “Are you saying everyone here is…”

“Demons,” Maze confirmed, her face twisted into a snarl as her eyes jumped from person to person. “Demons inhabiting human corpses, every one of them.”

“Yes, they are!” Michael called down, leaning his forearms onto the balcony railing and looking down at them. “I’ve been sending demons up for days while I worked towards this final moment. It’s been fun ruining your life, brother, but I think it’s time to wrap things up before Father notices everything I’ve been doing with His pet project. He’s been pretty absent the last few centuries, but even He’s bound to notice something as big as the sun going out.”

“That’s what all this had been about?” Lucifer asked, disbelief coloring every word. “You’ve just been trying to ruin my life?”

“You deserve to have your life ruined,” Michael snapped back, his scarred face twisting as he glared down at his brother. “You ruined all of _our_ lives, after all, with your stupid rebellion.”

“Are you _still_ going on about that?” Lucifer said, giving a little scoff. “Michael, you led the Heavenly Forces against me. You defeated me. You were directly responsible for my fall –”

“No, _you_ were responsible for your fall!” Michael snapped back, hands tightening on the balcony rails. “But you threw all of Heaven into disarray with your selfish, stupid rebellion! It’s because of you that Father and Mother started having problems and it’s because of you that Father became so obsessed with this stupid humanity project. It’s _your fault_ that everything has been so awful and it’s only fair that I make your life just as awful.”

“Still holding a grudge,” Lucifer muttered, shaking his head. “This is _just_ like you, Michael. But, you know, there’s something that’s _not_ like you: the sun. How did you do it? There’s no way you could’ve amassed enough power. It would take literal God to do it – or Goddess, and I know for a fact She can’t have helped you.”

“My little secret,” Michael confessed, smiling smugly down at his brother. “I’ve been whispering in Father’s ears for decades. He never noticed I was siphoning power off of Him the entire time. He’s been a bit distracted, as you might’ve heard.”

“You’ve been stealing Dad’s power?” Lucifer asked, shock plain in his voice. “How?”

“I’m not telling,” Michael said, his grin turning cruel. “I’m not giving you _any_ kind of upper hand. I like you just where you are right now: defeated and humbled before me.”

“Well, I’m hardly defeated, Michael,” Lucifer scoffed, glancing around at the crowd of silently staring demon-possessed humans. “True, you’ve got me in a bit of a tight spot at the moment, but that doesn’t mean –”

“Oh, it definitely _does_ mean,” Michael said. “I’m finally ready to put you in your place. I’ve nearly finished ruining your life, and once that’s done, I’m going to stick you in your very own Hell loop for a few centuries.”

“And what on Earth do you actually think you could torture me with for centuries?” Lucifer asked, grinning up at his twin. “I’ve led a fairly guilt-free existence, Michael, and no one can be kept in Hell who doesn’t believe they’re deserving of it. I know that I can leave at any time. What’s to stop me from turning around and walking out of the loop and coming after you?”

“Oh, Lucifer,” Michael said, his tone patronizing. “I know you’re an idiot, but even you can’t possibly be that stupid.”

Michael lifted one hand from the balcony rail, making a small gesture. That was all it took; the demon-possessed humans surged forward as one, hands shooting out to wrap around Chloe’s arms, shoulders, waist, grabbing her hair and her shirt.

“Lucifer!” she shrieked as the hands began to drag her backwards into the mob.

“Kill her,” Michael said, smiling malevolently down, his eyes never leaving his brother’s. “Make sure he can see it. He needs to know this is his fault.”

“Lucifer!” Chloe screamed, struggling as the fingers dug into her flesh, as the tugging at her hair began to be a ripping, as the sound of the stressed seams of her shirt popping thread by thread came to her ears. Lucifer’s wings exploded outward, sweeping demons back as he turned towards Chloe, already reaching towards her. Maze moved at the same moment, springing forward with her blades drawn and flashing at the nearest cold body.

“ _Stop!_ ”

The voice seemed to echo throughout the club, and Chloe felt it all the way through her body in a way she’d only felt sounds at concerts when she stood too close to the speakers. The single word seemed to pulse through her, impossible to ignore and impossible to disobey. The demons’ hands dropped away from her even as the word was still vibrating inside her. She realized she was squinting against a brilliant brightness, unaware of where the light had come from or even when it had begun shining. One moment, she had been struggling against the tightening grips of a dozen demonic hands and the next moment, she was shaking from the power of a single word and squinting towards a blinding light that seemed to be emanating from the entrance to Lux.

The light faded slowly, leaving behind a tall, stern-faced man. He seemed vaguely familiar, although Chloe didn’t think she’d ever seen him before. He was dressed in loose, comfortable clothing that tended towards wheat and khaki, and he stared into Lux with a look of disappointment on his face.

“Dad?” Lucifer’s voice was a bare whisper, and Chloe’s entire body went tight as shock rang through her. Had Lucifer just said…?

“Children,” the man said, sweeping his eyes across the two angels, pulling them both into his disappointment. “You know I hate it when you fight.”

“Father.” Michael’s voice was as disbelieving as Lucifer’s had been, the word coming out shaky. “You…you’re here?”

“Michael, I see you’ve been making new friends while I’ve been distracted,” God said. Chloe felt like her legs were going to give out underneath her and she stumbled towards Lucifer, grabbing a handful of his suit jacket’s sleeve as soon as she could reach him, holding onto it like it was the last lifeline in a stormy sea. She was looking at capitol-G- _God_.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, and the man – _God_ – glanced down at her, a very faint smile touching His wide, generous mouth.

“Chloe Decker. Hello, my child.” His voice was gentle and comforting, the sound of a father coming to chase away the bad dreams or soothe the scraped knee, and Chloe’s eyes filled with tears at the sudden rush of emotion that voice drew from her.

“Oh, my God,” she repeated, and His smile grew wider.

“Yes, we’ve established that, Chloe. I will happily speak with you in a moment,” He said, His voice turning dark as He looked away from her and up towards Michael on the balcony above them all, “but I’m afraid I need to handle my sons first.”

“Father,” Michael said again, his voice frantic, “let me explain –”

“In a moment, Michael,” God interrupted. “I’m sure your explanation will be interesting, but first…”

God stepped forward, stopping just above the first step down into Lux, his disappointed expression tightening further as He looked across the frozen demons filling the room.

“Children of Lilith, return to your home. You will trouble this plane no longer.”

The bodies around them dropped as one, the entire floor suddenly carpeted with the corpses of humans as every demon exited their flesh suit. Beside Chloe, Maze made a keening noise and God looked at her, His face stern.

“Mazikeen. You are not stealing the body of another. You do not belong on this plane, though.”

“I’ve…I’ve been h-helping Lucifer,” Maze said, her voice shaking in a way Chloe had never heard before.

“I am aware. I have been distracted, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been unaware.” God’s mouth twisted slightly in an expression that wasn’t quite a smile. “You still don’t belong on this plane. Return home for now, Mazikeen; the time will come soon enough for us to discuss your place in things.”

And Maze was gone. There was no puff of smoke, no glow of demonic energy, no shriek from her as she left. One moment, she was standing beside Chloe and the next moment, she was no longer there.

“Dad,” Lucifer began, his tone sharp, “Maze has been my constant companion and right-hand –”

“Lucifer, I said that I am aware of what has been happening,” God interrupted, raising a single hand to stop Lucifer’s words. “I don’t need an explanation. I also said that we would discuss her place in things. Please, son, I know patience has never been your virtue, but for just a little while, try to exercise some.”

Lucifer subsided, his expression strangely blank. Chloe’s fingers had started to go numb, and she shifted her grip on his sleeve slightly. Lucifer glanced down at her, seeming to become aware of her for the first time since God had joined them. He twisted his arm slightly, fingers finding hers and loosing them from his sleeve, twining with hers comfortingly as he pulled her a little closer to his side. Chloe moved willingly, the warmth of him beside her helping her to feel a little less at loose ends. She wanted to say something to him, but with _God_ standing only a few feet away, she didn’t know what she should say.

“Michael, please come downstairs and join us,” God said, making His own way down the stairs into Lux with all the majesty and stateliness of a king, each step measured and graceful.

Michael was considerably less poised. He backed away from the balcony railing in a series of quick, jerky movements and then rushed to the stairs to make his way down to the dance floor, tripping over his own feet and almost falling down the steps at one point.

Given Michael’s speed and God’s composed slowness, they ended up on the dance floor at the same moment. God paused for a moment, looking at the carpet of corpses with a sad expression on His face.

“This won’t do,” He said. “We can’t talk if we’re having to tiptoe between the shells of my children.”

Chloe couldn’t stop the shocked inhalation she sucked in. They were _gone_. There had been almost a hundred corpses piled across the floor of Lux, and now the entire club was _empty_ except for the four of them: God, two angels, and human.

Chloe had never in her life so wanted to swear. She pressed her lips together so hard that they hurt, refusing to give voice to words. Lucifer’s thumb soothed across the backs of her knuckles, and she realized she’d gripped his hand tight enough that she had to be causing him pain. He wasn’t complaining, though; just soothing her. Slowly, she loosened her grip, glancing up at him apologetically. He wasn’t looking down at her, though. His eyes were locked on his Father, his expression wary.

“Much better,” God said, stepping closer to Lucifer and Chloe on the dance floor, the soft tap of His soles echoing in the huge, empty silence of Lux. Michael had stopped at the edge of the dance floor, looking unsure. “Come over, Michael, join us. We need to talk about what you’ve been doing recently.”

“What I’ve uh…what I’ve been doing, Father?” Michael asked, his voice almost squeaking on the words.

“Michael.” God’s tone was scolding, and Chloe was shocked to see Michael flinch, like a child being three-named by a very angry parent. “Did you think I was unaware of you trying to take power from me?”

“You _knew?_ ” Michael asked, coming to an abrupt and shocked halt a few feet away from the grouping of God, the former Devil, and the human.

“I am known to be all-knowing and all-seeing, Michael. Did you think me so distracted that I stopped paying attention to my children?”

“You certainly seemed to’ve,” Lucifer muttered, his voice soft but surprisingly sharp.

God’s eyes ticked over to His other son for a moment, and Chloe saw a world of regret and annoyance battling for supremacy in God’s expression. After a moment, the emotions faded and He turned His face back to Michael.

“I was aware of what you were doing. I knew what you had planned. I was interested to see how far you would take it, though.”

“Stop, wait,” Chloe said, raising a hand as anger slowly built in her stomach. “Did you…did you just say you were _aware_ of what he was doing?”

“I knew he was taking small sips from the infinite well of my power, yes,” God said, His voice calm.

“But did you know what he was planning to do with it?” Chloe asked.

“Of course,” God confirmed, and Chloe’s anger boiled over. He had _known?_ He’d known about Michael putting out the sun, about using the human deaths that resulted from the increased tension on Earth to give demons a presence on Earth, and He had _allowed it?_

Chloe felt regrettable words building up in her chest, getting ready to burst forth and spray all over God, but Lucifer beat her to it.

“You _bastard!”_

Oh.

Chloe turned wide eyes on the archangel she loved, the tempestuous and unpredictable man she’d known the last few years, and wondered if she was about to see a good old-fashioned Old Testament smiting up close and personal.


	8. Chapter 8

God turned to stare at Lucifer, his expression unreadable. His dark eyes locked onto His son’s face for a long moment, but He didn’t speak. Only a very slight tightening of His full lips gave away any emotion on his face, the smallest deepening of the crows feet around his eyes.

“You selfish, unmitigated _bastard!_ ” Lucifer spat the words, and Chloe could feel the fine tremors running through his body where he stood beside her. She was fairly certain they were tremors of fury, but considering to whom he was mouthing off, there was every chance there might be a little fear mixed in with the anger. “You’ve always been full of self-interest, not caring for anything but Yourself, but this goes beyond the pale. You just _let_ Michael have access to the infinite power of God and darken the sun because You were _curious to see how far he’d take it?_ ”

The last came in a roar that made Chloe’s ears ring, his voice rebounding off the walls of Lux, but God just stared at Lucifer impassively. The tightening of his lips was gone now, his expression as peaceful as one would expect to see on the face of God.

“You’d think after thousands of years, nothing You did would surprise me anymore,” Lucifer said, shaking his head with a disgusted expression marring his usually beautiful face, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if he’d like to take a swing at his father. “And yet, here I stand, once again surprised.”

“You’ve gotten one thing wrong,” God pointed out, His voice as calmly unruffled as it had been since He’d first appeared in Lux. “Michael didn’t turn off the sun; I did.”

Lucifer’s mouth dropped open in surprise, but no sound came out. Michael gave a single, offended scoff, turning away as if denying what he’d just heard. Chloe, however, couldn’t hold back her disbelieving, disgusted exclamation.

“Are You fucking kidding me?”

God’s dark eyebrows rose slightly as he turned His face to Chloe, and she felt embarrassment warm her cheeks even as she dropped her eyes, unable to meet the gaze of God.

“She makes a good point,” Lucifer said, his tone sharp. “You are telling us that it wasn’t actually Michael who robbed humanity of their source of light and hope, it was actually _You_ , their supposed kind and loving Creator?”

“Michael could have spent millennia trying to take power from me without ever getting anywhere near enough to be able to affect my creation,” God said. “I wanted to see what he would do if he thought he’d been successful, so when he went to put the sun out, I stayed outside of his perceptions and took care of it for him.”

“Hundreds of people have _died_ because of that! Possibly thousands!” Chloe said, her earlier embarrassment vanishing in a new rush of indignant fury. “People panicked and they _died_ because the sun went dark. How could You let that happen?”

God looked at her with a faint smile, his voice completely calm as he said, “People die, Chloe. That is one of the gifts I gave to you.”

“ _Gifts?!”_ The word came out in a shout, and this time Chloe didn’t drop her eyes. “You think death is a _gift?_ ”

This time His expression _did_ change: he looked sympathetic. “I can understand how you might not be able to see that a mortal life is a gift, Chloe, but it truly is. Look at my sons here: they’ve taken their immortality and used it to engage in foolish feuds and the making of mistake after mistake.”

“Humans do that, too!” Chloe pointed out. “We just have a lot less time to do it in, because _You_ decided we should die after a few decades.”

“That is true,” God allowed. “But knowing that your lives are finite have given humans the ability to be so much more than they could ever have hoped to be if I’d made them as I did the angels.”

“No, I don’t buy that,” Chloe said, shaking her head and raising a hand towards God. “You can argue as long as you like – and given that You’re God, I’m guessing that could literally go on into infinity – but You’re not going to convince me that mortality is a _gift_. I can accept that it’s part of being human, but do _not_ call it a _gift_. Not here, not now. Not with so many bodies that can be laid directly at Your doorstep thanks to You deciding to put out the sun.”

God smiled very faintly, nodding slightly at Chloe, a tone of personal pride in his voice as he said, “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

Before Chloe could puzzle out what He meant by that, He turned to Lucifer. “I have returned the sun to its previous brightness. It has appeared on the other side of the world, and it will rise on this side of the world at its usual time tomorrow. The darkness is over.”

“What, just like that? You just decide it’s over, and there’s no harm, no foul?” Lucifer asked, his eyes narrowed with his continued anger at his father’s blasé attitude.

“You’re seriously telling me that I had nothing to do with the sun going out?” Michael shouted abruptly, speaking for the first time in several minutes, his voice shaking with his fury. “Why, Father? Why would You let me believe that I had succeeded?”

God turned his face back towards Michael, His expression touched with the faintest hint of sorrow. “I allowed you to believe you’d put out the sun because I needed to know how far your envy would take you. Much like Lucifer did so long ago, you let your own emotions orchestrate your downfall, son. Lucifer let his pride get the best of him, and you have let your envy over your own brother eat away at you for so long. Michael, you are almost nothing _but_ your envy now, so twisted and eaten up by your anger at your twin that I can no longer see anything of the angel I created.”

Michael’s face twisted, the scar Lucifer had slashed across his face making one corner of his mouth turn sharply down as he clenched his teeth in a furious snarl at his father.

“You envy Lucifer so deeply that you’ve done everything in your power to take from him all that made him who he was.” God shook His head slightly, lacing the fingers of His hands together in front of Him and letting them rest against his stomach. “I think it’s fitting that you should keep everything that you’ve taken.”

The anger dropped off Michael’s face in an instant, the archangel blinking his eyes for a bewildered moment before asking, “What?”

“You took Lucifer’s throne in Hell.” God unlaced His fingers, raising one hand to gesture towards Lucifer. “Being the Devil did Lucifer good; he’s grown so much in the last few thousand years, more than I could have dared to hope for when I saw that his actions were drawing him towards his inevitable fall. I hope it will be as good for you, Michael.”

“No…no!” Michael said, his face twisting in alarm and fury as God’s words sank in.

“I cast you out, Michael,” God said, negligently flicking the first two fingers of His right hand in Michael’s direction. Almost as if he’d actually been struck, Michael stumbled a few steps back, arms pinwheeling as he struggled to keep his balance. After only a few steps, though, he fell backwards, plummeting towards to floor of Lux…and _through_ it, descending down past the sight of non-omnipotents.

There was a moment of shocked silence, both Chloe and Lucifer staring at the glossy floor through which Michael had disappeared. Lucifer and Chloe exchanged a look, something unnamed rising in Lucifer’s eyes. After a bewildered but silent exchange between them, Lucifer turned to face his father, taking a deep breath that only trembled a little.

“Is this…does this mean that I’m…am I free? Am I…done?” Lucifer’s voice was soft, shaking with the hope buried underneath his words, and Chloe’s breath caught in her throat as she realized what Lucifer was asking. Was he done with _Hell_. Was he at last freed from the burden of ruling that realm and overseeing the torture of billions of human souls.

“Samael, you have served in Hell – exactly as I knew you would – for thousands of years.” God’s voice was soft, gentle, full of love and acceptance and everything one would expect from God. Still, Chloe’s body was tense as she waited to hear what He was going to say, not quite daring to hope that what she and Lucifer were hoping for would actually come to pass. “When you were cast from the Silver City, you accepted your fate. You saw that Hell needed a ruler, and you stepped up. You saw that human souls wracked with guilt needed somewhere to work through their desired suffering, and you provided that. You took on the mantle of the greatest monster of all time for billions of humans, and while you complained bitterly the entire time, you still did what needed to be done. You’ve earned your respite, my son. I wouldn’t have put Chloe in your path if I didn’t intend for you to be rewarded for your years of service.”

Chloe felt a wash of relief followed immediately by a spasm of anger. Here it was again: she was created _for_ Lucifer. She wasn’t her own person; she was merely something God gave to His son.

She’d hardly had time to start twisting internally under her own heavy emotions before God turned His eyes on her, one corner of His mouth quirking slightly.

“I know how angry you’ve been,” He said, and Chloe’s eyes went wide at His acknowledgement. “You felt like I made you for my son, and railed against being a piece in someone else’s game. You aren’t seeing the truth of it, though: _you_ aren’t the gift for him. You are gifts for _each other_. I knew when I created Samael that he would fall from grace; who do you think created him with all the pride that led him to try and overthrow me?”

Lucifer made an offended noise, and then gave a small shrug of resignation. “Pretty bad cop, being created purely to screw up,” he said, and God gave him a quick, amused glance before turning back to Chloe.

“I knew he would spend thousands of years in Hell. I knew he would eventually flee to Earth to escape his duties…and I knew all of that would help him to be worthy of you, because I knew who _you_ would be when I created you. I created the two of you to be foils for one another. That was my gift for you both.”

Chloe blinked hard, trying to clear the blur of sudden tears from her eyes, and reached a hand out to her side, knowing Lucifer would be there. He took the offered hand in his, his grip warm and familiar and _right_.

“You aren’t his gift, Chloe,” God reiterated, the smile on His face growing as He looked down at their twined fingers. “You are yourself, Chloe Jane Decker, and he’s just lucky enough to be worthy of you.”

Lucifer’s hand tightened on hers, and Chloe glanced up at him, seeing the softening of his expression as he looked down at her. “I can agree with that,” he said, his voice soft. Chloe didn’t fight the tears this time, letting them roll down her cheeks as she leaned towards him, pressing her face against his white cotton button-up, the familiar warmth of his skin a welcoming comfort against her face as she hid the wash of emotion boiling up in her. His free hand came up to press gently against her back, stroking lightly and soothingly.

“Well.” God’s voice made Chloe pull back a little from Lucifer, still sniffling as she fought to get herself back under control, a little embarrassed to have temporarily lost it. God clasped His hands together at His waist, looking back and forth between Lucifer and Chloe with a very pleased expression. “I suppose I’d better be on my way. I know I’ve left things to run themselves the last few millennia –”

“Not planning on continuing that, are You, Dad?” Lucifer asked, his tone turning sharp as his hand slid down Chloe’s back and fell away, leaving him free to face his father more directly.

God raised a single eyebrow at Lucifer’s tone, and then murmured, “I suppose it _is_ time for me to take a more active role in things. Although I don’t plan on messing around with Earth too much; it never worked out well for me in the past. I created humanity with free will so they could exist _without_ my constant interference, after all.”

“So, You’ll be heading back up to the Silver City, then?” Lucifer asked.

“Yes, I’ve left it to run itself for long enough, I think. And it was definitely _not_ meant to be self-policing.”

“I’m guessing I’m no longer _persona non grata_ up there?” Lucifer sounded doubtful but hopeful at the same time, and Chloe tightened her grip on his hand for a moment, the lightest squeeze to try and comfort him.

“You are no longer barred from home,” God confirmed, before quickly adding, “although I don’t recommend another coup attempt.”

“Hah! It wasn’t on my agenda. I _will_ be coming to speak with You again soon, though. There is _much_ that I would like to say to you, now that I know You’ll be listening.” The last was said through gritted teeth, Lucifer’s anger barely concealed, and God acknowledged His son’s words with a small nod, His face turning a little sad as He looked at Lucifer.

“I didn’t expect any less from you, Samael.”

Lucifer gave a little shrug of his shoulders, reaching his free hand up to brush lightly at the collar of his suit as if it needed neatening. He took his eyes off of God as he did so, directing his next words at no one in particular, although it was obvious to all three of them that he was speaking to his father.

“You should stop by to visit Amenadiel before you leave Earth. He’s still down here, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” God confirmed, giving a small nod. “I will drop a word or two in Amenadiel’s ear to let him know to come to the Silver City and speak with me; I don’t want to disturb his family.”

And then He was gone, as suddenly as He had appeared. Chloe and Lucifer were alone in Lux, the room seeming suddenly larger than normal with the abrupt absence of God.

Chloe blew out a breath, letting go of Lucifer’s hand to stumble unsteadily backwards a few steps until she bumped into one of the many couches positioned around the edges of the dance floor. She dropped down onto it, shoulders hunching, head lowering, and eyes closing as she took several long, slow breaths.

Lucifer was beside her a second later, crouching down next to her on the floor and resting a hand on her hunched shoulders. “Detective?”

“I just…I just need a minute,” she confessed. “That was…that was _God_.”

“Yes, unfortunately,” Lucifer said, his tone dry.

“No, but, Lucifer, that was _God_ ,” Chloe repeated, raising her head to stare at Lucifer intently. “That was actual _God_. I know He had to exist because _you_ exist, and you were always talking about Him, but…but I never thought I’d meet actual _God_.”

“I can see future family reunions are going to be a true joy,” Lucifer muttered before shaking his head slightly as if chasing away the thought. “Are you all right, Detective? Are you going to be able to…function normally again? Preferably soon?”

Chloe gave a shaky laugh, pressing the palms of her hands firmly against the couch cushion beneath her. “Yeah, I just…it was unexpected.”

“What about the last few days has been in any way ‘ _expected’_?” Lucifer asked, and Chloe barked a quick laugh, raising a hand to press over her mouth to stifle the sudden burst of sound.

“Good point,” she allowed, dropping her hand to her lap. “So…so, what do we do now?”

Lucifer rose from his crouch to settle on the couch beside her. He slid an arm around her shoulders and leaned back into the comforting embrace of the couch, drawing Chloe back with him. He looked around the empty club for a moment before focusing on her. “Anything we want. I have nowhere else to be.”

The smile that burst across his face was so joyful, so pure and free of concern, that Chloe couldn’t hold back her answering smile. He was right; there was nowhere he had to be. Hell had a new ruler, and Lucifer was free to live whatever life he wanted.

“What about Maze?” Chloe asked, suddenly sitting upright. Lucifer drew her back down to cuddle into his side again, shaking his head slightly.

“That is something I will be talking to Dad about. I expect Him to give her back immediately; she’s done nothing worth banishing from this plane, and she would be considerably happier up here than in Hell under Michael’s thumb. But I don’t expect the celebrations in the Silver City will be dying down anytime soon, not now that God Almighty has returned to His throne, so we have at least a few hours to burn before I’ll need to head up.”

“Then…maybe we could just spend some time together?” Chloe suggested, fighting off the surge of guilt that her suggestion brought to the fore. She _should_ be going back to the precinct to help with mopping up the ongoing disaster from the sun going out. True, it was back to shining on the other side of the planet, but she knew that people wouldn’t believe it was back until they saw it with their own eyes. Hell, she wouldn’t _really_ believe it was back until she saw it with her own eyes and she’d gotten the word of its return from _God_.

“I would like that very much, Detective,” Lucifer said, his smile soft.

They rode up to the penthouse together, holding hands as they leaned against one another’s sides in the mirrored elevator, exhausted after the last few days. By wordless agreement, they took the time to sweep up the glass scattered around the penthouse from the destroyed balcony doors before they collapsed together on the bed in Lucifer’s bedroom, he comforter still pulled up and tucked neatly in place. They were both fully clothed except for their shoes, curled together in a mishmash of limbs.

They lay on their sides facing one another. Chloe’s forehead rested against Lucifer’s chest, his chin on the top of her head, and they held on to one another with arms and legs as if afraid that the moment wouldn’t – couldn’t – last. After all, the last few days had shown them over and over again that no matter how much they wanted to be with one another, life had a way of getting in between them.

The night passed in near silence. They dozed on and off, neither able to fully relax. When the sky began to lighten around 5:30am, they both sat up on the bed, still pressed side-to-side as they faced the glass wall on the far side of the bedroom. Together, they watched as dawn broke over LA, turning the sky from the deep black that had ruled it for the last few days into shades of grey, purple, and pink. When the sun finally broke the horizon, they fell back together on the bed and dropped into exhausted, relieved sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Chloe woke up in the late afternoon, the light from the sun a warm, orange-red blanket that lay comfortingly over the entire bedroom. She stretched and yawned, letting herself wake up by inches rather than trying to immediately roll over and find her phone to check her messages. She knew that she had given herself a huge break by taking the day to sleep, but she had _needed_ that sleep. In the last few days, she’d been hammered with murders, nearly died twice, watched Lucifer nearly die, lost a friend for who-knew-how-long to the whims of _God_ , and dealt with the stress of a possible worldwide eternal darkness. She _deserved_ a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

She rolled over, putting a hand out to brush along the bed, searching for Lucifer. She didn’t feel him, and a faint frown creased her face. She shuffled slightly in the comfortable bed to further her reach, but her questing fingertips still couldn’t find him. She couldn’t even find the warmth of his body on the sheets, and she rolled to her side, blinking in the golden light of the setting sun as she took in the empty bed beside her.

“Lucifer?” she called, sitting up and tugging at her shirt in an attempt to straighten it and stop it from strangling her torso. “Lucifer, are you here?”

“Detective, you’re awake!” Lucifer stepped into the bedroom, carrying a mug in one hand and smiling like the cat who’d eaten the canary. He was wearing a fresh suit and, as he stepped up next to the bed to offer her the mug, smelled like he’d showered recently. Chloe was instantly aware of how disgustingly grubby she was, having been in the same clothes and without a shower for at least 48 hours, perhaps longer – it was hard to remember the last time she’d given herself the luxury of a shower, what with all the back-to-back emergencies.

“How long have you been up?” Chloe asked, her voice muzzy as she took the offered mug. It was a relief to find it filled with fresh coffee. A single sip told her he’d doctored it exactly the way she liked it, and she gave an appreciative hum, bringing the mug up for a second sip.

“A few hours,” Lucifer said, lowering himself gracefully to sit on the edge of the bed. His dark eyes were locked on her face, the small, smug smile still quirking up the corners of his mouth. “I’ve been to the Silver City and back.”

“What, really?” Chloe lowered the mug to rest on her thighs, focusing on Lucifer. “So…what happened? Did you talk to – to your dad? About Maze, I mean.”

“Of course,” Lucifer said. “She’s downstairs, helping the regular bartender get everything set up. I’m expecting double the crowd tonight; I’d imagine humanity will be in a celebratory mood.”

“Then she’s back for good?” Chloe pressed.

“Yes, nothing to it. Apparently, He hadn’t intended to keep her away for long; He just needed her out of the way for a little while so He could ‘sort things out.’ Anyway, she’s hardly the issue at the moment.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Chloe said, shifting a little on the soft mattress, getting more comfortable as she settled into the conversation with Lucifer. “You talked to your dad. That’s a big deal.”

Lucifer’s mouth pursed into a small moue of distaste. “Well, ‘talked to’ seems like you’re giving entirely too much credit to what happened. Technically, I shouted at him for several hours while he listened and gave nothing back. Honestly, it wasn’t all that different from the thousands of years he was _in absentia_.”

“Then…nothing was worked through?” Chloe asked, disappointment surging in her chest and tightening her mouth into a slight frown.

“He listened, and I knew he was listening, so…that’s a small step up from before. But, no, I wouldn’t say that anything was ‘worked through’ as such. I’m not letting it go, though,” Lucifer said, a smile quirking his lips as he tugged lightly at the cuffs of his suit jacket. “I plan to become a veritable thorn in dear old Dad’s side, and keep pricking the prick until He responds.”

Chloe choked on a startled laugh, raising a hand to press her fingertips to her mouth, stifling the sound. “That, uh…that sounds very on-brand for you.”

“Have to keep my image in place,” Lucifer said, raising his dark brows slightly. “I may no longer be the Lord of Hell, but I can’t give up all my devilish ways overnight.”

“Speaking of, any idea how Michael’s settling in?” Chloe asked.

Lucifer’s smile stretched, giving him the mien of a cat who’d been into the cream. “Very poorly, if gossip is to be believed. He’s been raging almost nonstop since Dad tossed him into Hell. One could almost pity the demons, if they hadn’t been implemental in their own damnation by supporting a usurper to my throne.”

Chloe hesitated, picking at a tiny speck of dust that had settled on the comforter near her. Finally, she asked, “Do you…miss it?”

“Miss…Hell?” Lucifer asked, sounding puzzled.

“Being the Lord of Hell. Being in charge of everything. Your Devil face. All your devilish powers.” Chloe spread her hands wide, in an all-encompassing gesture. “Any of it. All of it.”

Lucifer hesitated for a long moment, obviously thinking. His dark eyes stared down at the comforter beside Chloe, but it was clear he wasn’t actually looking at it. Finally, he took a deep breath and raised his gaze to hers, only the faintest puckering between his brows giving her any indication of his mood. “I…I suppose I _will_ miss it, eventually. I’ll want to terrify a suspect and try to use my Devil face and just end up grunting like a constipated rhinoceros.”

Chloe laughed softly, leaning out and reaching across the comforter to take hold of one of his hands with her free hand, her fingers wrapping around his. He squeezed her fingers gently, a faint smile ticking up the corners of his mouth.

“For right now, though, I’m…relieved. Knowing that I don’t have to return, knowing that it’s a problem that I no longer have to concern myself with leaves me feeling freer than I have in millennia.” His eyes lit up and he pulled his hand free from hers. “Speaking of things to concern oneself with…”

Lucifer reached into his suit jacket, digging into an interior pocket and drawing out Chloe’s cell phone. “This has been ringing and chiming non-stop for the last few hours. I took it out of here to keep it from waking you.”

“Oh, my God,” Chloe muttered, leaning out across the bed to deposit her mug of coffee on a small table before reaching out for her phone. Lucifer put it in her hand with a smirk, and Chloe immediately began scrolling. There were a dozen missed calls from the precinct, and nearly double that from Dan. There were even three from her mother, and she groaned softly. “Trixie. Oh, my God, she and my mom must be worried sick.”

“Not to worry,” Lucifer said, raising a hand. “I called Penelope before I headed up to the Silver City and let both her and Trixie know that you were absolutely fine and just catching up on sleep before heading back into the fray. I assured them both you’d be by to pick up Trixie no later than tomorrow morning.”

Chloe blinked, nonplussed. “Oh. Wow, Lucifer, that was…that was really amazing. Thank you so much. Uh, what about Dan? And the precinct?”

Lucifer huffed softly, a small line appearing between his brows. “As if I wouldn’t take care of things while I let you rest. I let Daniel know that you were fine, and I even talked to your current Lieutenant – how many temporary Lieutenants are you likely to have before they assign the new permanent one?”

“That’s politics,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “I’m keeping out of that.”

“Mmm,” Lucifer said, crossing one leg over the other. “Well. I’ve handled everything. Of course, they want you back in as soon as possible, but I reminded them that you were handling a family emergency and would be back once you could free yourself from it.”

“Lucifer. That’s…that’s a _lie_ ,” Chloe said, alarm spiking in her.

“Hardly. You _have_ been dealing with an emergency, and given what we are to one another now, I don’t feel using the word ‘family’ is stretching the truth too far.”

Chloe froze, eyes widening slightly. Lucifer took in her expression and his own darkened slightly.

“Did I…assume too much?”

“What? No!” Chloe assured him quickly, scooting across the bed until she was close enough to lay her hand on his where it rested on top of the comforter, her shoulder pressing into his. “I just…I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that we…I mean, that we’re…we’re really together. And…and we’re going to stay together.”

“I should certainly hope so,” Lucifer said, trying to sound unconcerned and failing. His brows were drawn in, eyes worried. “Detective…Chloe…if you have doubts, that is something we should address now.”

“Lucifer, I can tell you truthfully, from the bottom of my heart, I have _no_ doubts. Talking with…with your Dad – and boy, is it weird to say that and know I mean _the_ God – helped me feel so much better about us. I just hadn’t stopped to realize just how serious we are now.”

“I certainly am. Serious, that is,” Lucifer said, the concern slowly melting off his face as he raised his other hand to lay it on her cheek, his thumb stroking lightly along her cheek. “I’ve apparently chosen all along to be vulnerable with you, Detective. I’ve known for ages that you weren’t like anyone else I’ve ever known, and that if you were ever able to accept me, I would never be the same man that I’d been before that moment.”

Chloe’s chest tightened, making it suddenly hard to draw a deep breath. She reached out with both hands, cupping his face. The scratch of stubble against her palms helped to anchor her to the moment and keep her from being overwhelmed by the depth of emotion his confession had drawn up from her. She met his eyes, his gaze unwavering, and she made her choice. This was going to be forever. This man – archangel – was going to be her future. No matter what else came at them in their lives, she would be by his side.

She leaned forward to kiss him and he met her halfway, the soft brush of their lips a trembling and wordless promise to each other. 

He smelled of soap, shampoo, and the expensive and subtle cologne he most often preferred, and Chloe remembered she was grubby and disgusting after a few days of non-stop disasters and missed showers.

Chloe broke the kiss, pulling back with a faint grimace. “Do you mind if I use your shower? I could really, _really_ use one.”

Lucifer’s nose wrinkled ever so slightly as he gazed down at her. “I didn’t want to say.”

Chloe huffed out a laugh, dragging herself out of the comfortable bed. “Well, it’s a good thing I _did_ say, then. Just point me in the right direction…”

Twenty minutes later, she was much cleaner, smelling of Lucifer’s soap and shampoo, but stymied by a new problem: the only clothes she had available were stiff with sweat and dirt from the last few days, and she was loathe to put them back on.

She was standing in a towel, contemplating the pile of disgusting clothes on the floor, when a soft tap at the bathroom door drew her attention. The door cracked open and Lucifer peeked through the narrow gap, his face brightening in an enthusiastic smile when he saw her.

“Detective. You shouldn’t have dressed up for me.”

“Ha ha,” Chloe said dryly, holding the towel more firmly across her chest, suddenly embarrassed. “What did you want, Lucifer?”

“I realized you might not want to put your dirty clothes back on after your ablutions, so I brought some things for you,” he said, opening the door wider to thrust in a bundle of clothes held tight in one hand.

“If those are things leftover from some drunk one-night-stand,” Chloe began, her tone frosty, but Lucifer cut her off.

“No no no. These are some of _my_ things. Nothing I wear regularly, of course – I don’t think my bespoke suits would work for you – but something that would at least cover you until we could get you back to your apartment for a proper change of wardrobe.” He shook the clothes out and Chloe blinked in surprise at the grey sweatpants and white tank top, clothes she would never have imagined Lucifer owning let alone wearing. As the surprise lessened, though, gratitude filled her. Not only had he anticipated the problem she’d face after her shower, he’d gone out of his way to find clothes that she might be comfortable in and brought them to her.

Appreciation filled her, warm and soft. Abruptly, she stepped forward across the bathroom, shifting to one side to avoid the out-held bundle of clothing in Lucifer’s hand. She pushed the bathroom door open more, going up on tiptoe to press a kiss to Lucifer’s mouth.

She lowered herself back to the flat of her feet and smiled at him. “Thank you. Thank you for thinking of me, and for taking the time to find clothes that I could be comfortable in. Thank you for helping me try to save the world from your brother. Thank you for being there when I need you, and for saying the crazy, off-the-wall things that help me look at a case in a new way. Thank you for…for you.”

Lucifer had looked puzzled when Chloe began her speech, but by the end, he was smiling, his eyes full of warmth. He leaned down, offering her a second kiss, and Chloe took it gladly.

This kiss went on for quite some time, both of them losing themselves in the warmth of one another’s mouths and the press of body to body. By the time they broke apart, Lucifer had dropped his handful of clothing onto the tiled floor and Chloe had lost her grip on her towel. Without needing to discuss it, they exited the bathroom and made their way back towards the bedroom, their hands never leaving off of touching one another, their lips meeting over and over as they let themselves sink into the relief of everything finally being over and having no more reason to hold themselves back from something they’d wanted for years.

Hours later, night had taken over the sky outside Lucifer’s bedroom, the sky spangled with stars and glowing with the brilliant reflected light of the moon. They were curled together underneath the blankets in Lucifer’s bed, bare skin pressed tightly as they both tried to catch their breath. Lucifer’s fingers were plunged deep into the dampness of Chloe’s hair, holding her head gently to his bare chest. One of her hands rested against his cheek, her thumb stroking mindlessly back and forth across the stubble on his jaw.

“That was…” Lucifer found himself at a loss for words, the sentence trailing off unfinished.

“Amazing,” Chloe supplied, turning her face slightly to press a kiss against his chest.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Sorry I missed it.”

They both jumped at the sound of Maze’s voice, Chloe reaching automatically for the sheets to pull them more thoroughly over her body even as she was rolling away from Lucifer. She ended up with nearly all the blankets wrapped around her, cocooned in rich cotton and silk, while Lucifer had to make do with grabbing a pillow and shoving it into his lap at the last second.

“Oh, come on, neither of you have anything I haven’t seen before,” Maze said, leaning against the open doorway with an amused expression. “I was just coming up here to let you know that things are heating up downstairs and it might be worth your time to stop in and make an appearance, Lucifer…but I think maybe things are plenty hot enough up here to keep you occupied.”

“Yes, Mazikeen, thank you for that,” Lucifer said, somehow managing to sound sure of himself despite the fact that he was sitting completely nude on the bed with the exception of a bed pillow covering his crotch.

“I’ll just head back downstairs and leave you to yourselves,” Maze said, grinning as she turned away from the bedroom.

“Welcome back home, Maze,” Chloe called from inside the cocoon of blankets and sheets. Maze raised a single slim-fingered hand to wave as she walked out of sight, heading back across the penthouse to the elevator.

When the sound of the doors sliding shut filtered to them from across the penthouse, Lucifer finally tossed the pillow aside with a sigh and turned toward Chloe. He couldn’t stop the huff of amusement from escaping as he took her in, wrapped nearly head to toe in the bedclothes.

“Do you need help, Detective?”

“That might be nice,” she admitted. “I think I could get my right arm out, but it would probably go a lot faster if you just unwound me.”

Lucifer got to work setting both Chloe and the bed to rights, and when he’d finished, they settled back comfortably together, Chloe nestled into the warmth of his arms again.

“I keep thinking I should get back to work, or go pick up Trixie…but I guess there’s no rush at the moment,” Chloe said, twisting a little so she could tip her head up and look at Lucifer’s face.

“Mmm, no. We have the whole night ahead of us,” he said, a pleased smile on his face.

“Then let’s take advantage of it.” Chloe twisted more, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. “And maybe think about getting a lock or something on the elevator. Soon.”

“I’ll add that to my To-Do List,” Lucifer agreed.

And then there was nothing but the sound of kissing and the soft brush of skin against skin as Lucifer and Chloe relaxed into one another, finally allowing themselves to be happy.


End file.
